Worker flows and job flows behave differently over the business cycle. The authors investigate the sources of the differences by studying quantitative properties of a multiple-worker version of the search/matching model that features endogenous job separation and intra-firm wage bargaining....

Inference about common international stochastic trends and interest rates is gained using a small open economy model, data from seven developed countries, and Bayesian methods. Shocks to these common factors explain up to 17 percent of the variability of output in several economies....

This paper attempts to quantify business cycle effects of bank capital requirements. The authors use a general equilibrium model in which financing of capital goods production is subject to an agency problem. At the center of this problem is the interaction between entrepreneurs' moral hazard...

This study documents a general decline in the volatility of employment growth during the period 1956 to 2002 and examines its possible sources. The authors use a panel design that exploits the considerable state-level variation in volatility during the period. The roles of monetary policy, oil...

This paper studies the quantitative properties of a general equilibrium model where a continuum of heterogeneous entrepreneurs are subject to aggregate as well as idiosyncratic risks in the presence of a borrowing constraint. The calibrated model matches the highly skewed wealth and income...

Standard real business cycle theory predicts that consumption should be smoother than output, as observed in developed countries. In emerging economies, however, consumption is more volatile than income. In this paper the authors provide a novel explanation of this phenomenon, the ‘consumption...

The authors examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort they first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be...

Two often-divergent U.S. GDP estimates are available, a widely-used expenditure-side version GDPE, and a much less widely-used income-side version GDI . The authors propose and explore a "forecast combination" approach to combining them. They then put the theory to work, producing a superior...

American politics have become increasingly polarized in recent decades. To the extent that political polarization introduces uncertainty about economic policy, this pattern may have adversely affected the economy. According to existing theories, a rise in the volatility of fiscal shocks faced by...

Presented by Charles I. Plosser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Capital Markets in the Post-Crisis Environment, Global Interdependence Center and the Bank of Finland Helsinki, Finland, June 6, 2011