Macroeconomic disasters (wars, pandemics, depressions) are characterized by drastic shifts and increased volatility of the aggregate consumption to income ratio. By standard intertemporal budget constraint logic, this ratio is linked to expectations of future income and consumption growth rates....

Macroeconomic disasters (wars, pandemics, depressions) are characterized by drastic shifts and increased volatility of the aggregate consumption to income ratio. By standard intertemporal budget constraint logic, this ratio is linked to expectations of future income and consumption growth rates....

This paper uses a large historical dataset (1870-2016) for 16 industrial economies to show that during macroeconomic disasters (e.g., wars, pandemics, depressions) aggregate consumption and income are significantly less decoupled than during normal times. That is, during these times of turmoil,...

Given China's complex monetary policy framework, the People's Bank of China's (PBOC) monetary policy rule is difficult to infer from its observed behaviour. In this paper, we adopt a novel approach, using text analytics to estimate and interpret the unknown component in the PBOC's reaction...

This paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on the relationship between consumption and total wealth (i.e., the sum of asset wealth and human wealth). Financial liberalization is persistent and may signal changes in expected future consumption growth rates and/or in rates of...

This dissertation consists of three independent research papers and contributes to the empirical analysis of the interaction between business and financial cycles from different perspectives. The first paper uses a non-linear multilevel dynamic factor model to better understand the changing...