The marginal cost of plant capacity, measured by the price of equity is significantly procyclical. Yet, the price of a major intermediate input into expanding plant capacity, investment goods, is coutercyclical. The ratio of these prices is Tobin's q. We interpret the fact that Tobin's q differs...

We argue that the vast bulk of movements in aggregate real economic activity during the Great Recession were due to financial frictions interacting with the zero lower bound. We reach this conclusion looking through the lens of a New Keynesian model in which firms face moderate degrees of price...

We augment a standard monetary DSGE model to include a Bernanke-Gertler-Gilchrist financial accelerator mechanism. We fit the model to US data, allowing the volatility of cross-sectional idiosyncratic uncertainty to fluctuate over time. We refer to this measure of volatility as 'risk'. We find...

We develop and estimate a general equilibrium model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates, including labor market variables. In sharp contrast to leading New Keynesian models, wages are not subject to exogenous nominal rigidities. Instead we derive wage...

We modify an otherwise standard medium-sized DSGE model, in order to study the macroeconomic effects of placing leverage restrictions on financial intermediaries. The financial intermediaries (`bankers') in the model must exert effort in order to earn high returns for their creditors. An agency...