The objective of the paper is to explain the last boom and bust in consumption in Ireland by the failure of consumers to correctly distinguish permanent changes in productivity from temporary changes. It uses a business cycle model, where agents update their beliefs about long-run productivity...

This study provides empirical evidence on the strengthening of the impact of house prices on the US macroeconomy. The stability of the house prices macro-link is tested in a small-dimensional vector autoregressive model over the last fifty years. The estimated break-points are used to split the...

The paper assesses the contribution of key factors associated with external imbalances in the Eurozone through the estimation of a panel-data vector autoregressive model over 1975-2011. Growth fluctuations, initially associated with demand booms triggered by unusually low interest rates and...