Evidence from monetary VARs suggests that in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. 7 the impact of monetary shocks on real house prices is about three to five times as large 8 as that on real GDP. Although these trade-offs are not manifestly unfavorable, in the 9 light of the large differences in the...

M1 velocity is, approximately, the permanent component of the short-term rate. This implies that agents-in deciding how much wealth to allocate to non interest bearing M1, as opposed to interest-bearing assets-almost uniquely react to permanent shocks to the opportunity cost, essentially...

Based on standard New Keynesian models I show that policy counterfactuals based on the theoretical structural VAR representations of the models fail to reliably capture the impact of changes in the parameters of the Taylor rule on the (reduced-form) properties of the economy. Based on estimated...

We explore the macroeconomic impact of a compression in the long-term bond yield spread within the context of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 via a Bayesian time-varying parameter structural VAR. We identify a ‘pure’ spread shock which, leaving the short-term rate unchanged by construction,...

This paper compares the depth of the Recent Crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the Recent Crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

This paper compares the depth of the recent crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the recent crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

The goal of this paper is to provide stylized facts on recovery from economic downturns and to evaluate the role of macroeconomic policies in promoting recovery. In particular, we examine gross domestic product (GDP) recessions and financial downturns (credit contractions and stock price...

I explore whether time-series methods exploiting the long-run equilibrium properties of the housing market might have detected the disequilibrium in U.S. house prices which pre-dated the Great Recession as it was building up. Based on real-time data, I show that a VAR in levels identified as in...

This paper discusses the paper The Source of Historical Economic Fluctuations: An Analysis using Long-Run Restrictions by Neville Francis and Valerie A. Ramey. It argues that these authors have made great progress both in the precise measurement of labor input as well as determining the effect...

Over the past two decades, technological progress has been biased towards making skilled labor more productive. What does skill-biased technological change imply for business cycles? To answer this question, we construct a quarterly series for the skill premium from the CPS and use it to...