This paper first reviews a number of stylised facts concerning OECD country business cycles over the past four decades. In general, the amplitude of business cycles has fallen, driven mainly by declining fluctuations of domestic demand. As a result, international divergencies of cyclical...

Sudden and protracted oil-price increases are generally accompanied by economic contractions and high inflation. How should monetary policy react to oil-price shocks in order to minimize such adverse macroeconomic effects? We build a DSGE model characterized by two oil-importing countries and...

This paper examines the sources of Australia’s business cycle fluctuations. The cyclical component of GDP is extracted using the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition and a structural VAR model is identified using robust sign restrictions derived from a small open economy model. In contrast to...

This paper analyses the role of real and nominal shocks in explaining business cycles in a small open economy like that of Norway. In particular, we study the sources behind real exchange rate fluctuations since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement. Imposing long run restrictions implied...

A European transfer system could contribute to a stabilization of the euro area by synchronizing business cycles in the monetary union, thereby simplifying the common monetary policy. Such a system is suggested here in the form of a European unemployment insurance system. Compared to other forms...

Depending on how it is structured, the introduction of a European unemployment insurance within the euro area could make a significant contribution to stabilizing economic development. This even applies to a relatively small-scale system (based on the volume of transfers) with a maximum...

Germany and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the CE4) have been in a process of deepening economic integration which has lead to the development of a dynamic supply chain within Europe—the Germany-Central European Supply Chain (GCESC). Model-based simulations suggest two key...

This paper examines the sources of Australia's business cycle fluctuations focusing on the role of international shocks and short run stabilization policy. A VAR model identified using robust sign restrictions derived from an estimated structural model is used to aid the investigation. The...

We show that welfare can be lower under complete financial markets than under autarky in a monetary union with home bias, sticky prices and asymmetric shocks. Such a monetary union is a second-best environment in which the structure of financial markets affects risk-sharing but also shapes the...

The global economy has a chronic shortage of safe assets which lies behind many recent macroeconomic imbalances. This paper provides a simple model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM), its recessionary safety traps, and its policy antidotes. Safety traps share many common features with...