This paper examines the impact of rising trade and financial integration on international business cycle comovement among a large group of industrial and developing countries. The results provide at best limited support for the conventional wisdom that globalization has increased the degree of...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the degree of global cyclical interdependence over the period 1960-2005. We categorize the 106 countries in our sample into three groups – industrial countries, emerging markets, and other developing economies. Using a dynamic factor model, we then...

During the period 1991-93, Finland experienced the deepest economic downturn in an industrialized country since the 1930s. We argue that the culprit behind this Great Depression was the collapse of Finnish trade with the Soviet Union, because it induced a costly restructuring of the...

How does the asymmetry of labor market institutions affect the adjustment of a currency union to shocks? To answer this question, this paper sets up a dynamic currency union model with monopolistic competition and sticky prices, hiring frictions and real wage rigidities. In our analysis, we...

Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey....

This paper provides a model of "social hysteresis" whereby long, deep recessions demotivate workers and thereby lead them to change their work ethic. In switching from a pro-work to an anti-work identity, their incentives to seek and retain work fall and consequently their employment chances...

This paper investigates how macroeconomic policy shocks in Turkey affect the total unemployment and provides evidence on the differential responses of the unemployment by sectors of economic activity. Our paper extends the previous work in two respects. First, we consider not only the response...

Public opinion influences politicians, and therefore influences public policy decisions. What are the roles of self-interest, knowledge, and ideology in public opinion formation? And how do people learn about economic issues? Using a new, specially-designed survey, we find that most respondents...

Praktisch alle wirtschaftlich entwickelten Länder der Welt sind demokratisch. Sind demokratische Strukturen also kausal für wirtschaftlichen Wohlstand und Wachstum? Oder ist es vielmehr der wirtschaftliche Entwicklungsstand eines Landes, der eine Demokratie erst ermöglicht? Dieser Artikel...

Starting in mid-2007, the global financial crisis quickly metamorphosed from the bursting of the housing bubble in the US to the worst recession the world has witnessed for over six decades. Through an in-depth review of the crisis in terms of the causes, consequences and policy responses, this...