The Financial Crisis has hit particularly hard countries like Ireland or Spain. Procyclical fiscal policy has contributed to a boom-bust cycle that undermined fiscal positions and deepened current account deficits during the boom. We set up an RBC model of a small open economy, following Mendoza...

This paper highlights the role of the terms of trade in the trade channel of propagation of oil price shocks both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, I show that oil price shocks have a large, persistent and statistically significant impact on the US terms of trade. Theoretically, I add...

This paper analyzes when and why idiosyncratic oil supply shocks produce large macroeconomic effects in an analytically tractable two-country general equilibrium model. We focus on a demand-driven mechanism, the trade channel, which transmits oil shocks across economies through changes in the...

The PIGS countries have suffered economic instability and fiscal havoc in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. We argue this is the consequence of pursuing procyclical fiscal policies. We add a fiscal rule, which varies public spending with the cycle, to an otherwise standard RBC model of a...

Recent theoretical literature claims that demand-driven transmission mechanisms are the key to understand how oil shocks affect the economy. Following this literature, we measure the economic strength of one of these demand-driven channels, the trade channel, in the transmission of oil shocks to...

The Financial Crisis has hit particularly hard countries like Ireland or Spain. Procyclical fiscal policy has contributed to a boom-bust cycle that undermined fiscal positions and deepened current account deficits during the boom. We set up an RBC model of a small open economy, following Mendoza...

The essay sets out what product market reforms are, as well as the main measurement issues, followed by an analysis of how such reforms lubricate adjustment processes in EMU, in particular via the “competitiveness channelâ€. Attention is paid to the short-run and longer-run aspects of...