This paper analyzes the transmission process of monetary policy in a closed-economy New Keynesian model with monopolistic banking, credit market imperfections, and a cost channel. Lending rates incorporate a risk premium, which depends on firms' net worth and cyclical output. The supply of bank...

We investigate changes in international business cycle affiliations using an iterative procedure for detecting system-wide structural breaks. We analyze GDP growth rates in two systems, one with the US, Euro-area, UK and Canada and the other for the Euro-area countries of France, Germany and...

Theories of psychology and empirical evidence suggest that the reference transactions against which workers judge fairness exhibit inertia. This paper shows that a fair-wage model with inertia in fairness perceptions provides a plausible explanation for the observed negative correlation between...

The paper derives and compares historical and real-time estimates of the UK natural unemployment rate and shows that real-time estimates are fraught with noise and should be treated with scepticism. A counterfactual exercise shows that, for most of the 1990s, the Bank of England tracked changes...

The pattern of Spanish comparative labor productivity performance in the period 1950-2004 is underpinned by distinctive sectoral trends. From 1950 until the mid-1970s, Spain narrowed the aggregate labor productivity gap with Britain by shifting resources out of agriculture and by improving its...

This paper applies a business cycle dating algorithm to monthly North West county and local authority district claimant count data to assess turning points in the economic cycle of sub-regions. We date the transition of all districts of the North West into recession beginning in June 2007. By...