For a given set of banks, which economic and financial scenarios will lead to big losses? How big can losses in such scenarios possibly get? These are the two central questions of macro stress tests. We believe that most current macro stress testing models have deficits in answering these...

Should shocks be part of our macro-modeling tool kit - for example, as a way of modeling discontinuities in fiscal policy or big moves in the financial markets? What are shocks, and how can we best put them to use? In heterodox macroeconomics, shocks tend to come in two broad types, with some...

Global growth prospects have deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the year, raising the specter of global recession. This paper relies on insights gleaned from previous global recessions to analyze the recent evolution of economic activity and policies and presents plausible...

This paper considers a plan proposed by Warren Buffett, in which importers would be required to obtain certificates proportional to the amount of non-oil goods (and possibly also services) they brought into the country. These certificates would be granted to firms that exported goods. Exporting...

This paper presents the main features of the macroeconomic model being used at The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, which has proven to be a useful tool in tracking the current financial and economic crisis. We investigate the connections of the model to the New Cambridge" approach, and...

This paper sets out a rigorous basis for the integration of Keynes-Kaleckian macroeconomics (with constant or increasing returns to labor, multipliers, mark-up pricing, etc.) with a model of the financial system (comprising banks, loans, credit money, equities, etc.), together with a model of...

Despite being arguably one of the most active areas of research in heterodox macroeconomics, the study of the dynamic properties of stock-flow consistent (SFC) growth models of financially sophisticated economies is still in its early stages. This paper attempts to offer a contribution to this...

Building on Beaudry, Nam and Wang (2011) - hereafter BNW -, we use survey data on consumer sentiment in order to identify the causal effects of confidence shocks on real economic activity in a selection of advanced economies. Starting from a set of closed-economy VAR models, we show that these...

Having efficient and accurate samplers for simulating the posterior distribution is crucial for Bayesian analysis. We develop a generic posterior simulator called the "dynamic striated Metropolis-Hastings (DSMH)" sampler. Grounded in the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, it draws its strengths from...

No, not really. Responding to lingering concerns about the reliability of SVARs, Christiano et al (NBER Macro Annual, 2006, "CEV") propose to combine OLS estimates of a VAR with a spectral estimate of long-run variance. In principle, this could help alleviate specification problems of SVARs in...