When do financial markets help in predicting economic activity? With incomplete markets, the link between financial and real economy is state-dependent and financial indicators may turn out to be useful particularly in forecasting tail macroeconomic events. We examine this conjecture by studying...

We develop a methodology to identify and rank systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). Our approach is consistent with that followed by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) but, unlike the latter, it is free of judgment and it is based entirely on publicly available data, thus...

Financial markets are central to the transmission of uncertainty shocks. This paper documents a new aspect of the interaction between the two by showing that uncertainty shocks have radically different macroeconomic implications depending on the state financial markets are in when they occur....

We study the impact of climate volatility on economic growth exploiting data on 133 countries between 1960 and 2005. We show that the conditional (ex ante) volatility of annual temperatures increased steadily over time, rendering climate conditions less predictable across countries, with...

The Basel III regulation explicitly prescribes the use of Hodrick-Prescott filters to estimate credit cycles and calibrate countercyclical capital buffers. However, the filter has been found to suffer from large ex-post revisions, raising concerns on its fitness for policy use. To investigate...

This paper deals with the long term effects of several important trade policy initiatives implemented by the EU in the last decade: the European Agreements, the Euro-Mediterranean Agreements and the Customs Union with Turkey. The analytical tool is GTAP, a static and perfectly competitive CGE...

Financial markets are central to the transmission of uncertainty shocks. This paper documents a new aspect of the interaction between the two by showing that uncertainty shocks have radically different macroeconomic implications depending on the state financial markets are in when they occur....