On the basis of quarterly data in 1977-87 and the use of the Engle-Granger method of co-integration, we find that real and financial factors, insolvency and illiquidity, are all important, separate influences on the defaults of French firms. We capture the effect of illiquidity by constructing...

Expectations about the future are central for determination of current macroeconomic outcomes and the formulation of monetary policy. Recent literature has explored ways for supplementing the benchmark of rational expectations with explicit models of expectations formation that rely on...

We review theoretical and empirical analyses of the costs of inflation. Part 2 of the paper examines microeconomic models in which inflation is perfectly anticipated, and viewed as the only distortion in the economy or as one of many distortionary taxes, which may or may not be chosen optimally....