A sunspot variable is any random variable that is not related to fundamental factors of the economy but a potential coordination device. The coordination power of sunspots has been analysed in theory and in experiments. However, some have discussed whether sunspots, e.g., public announcements...

A sunspot variable is any random variable that is not related to fundamental factors of the economy but a potential coordination device. The coordination power of sunspots has been analysed in theory and in experiments. However, some have discussed whether sunspots, e.g., public announcements...

This paper combines two strands of the experimental sunspot literature. It extends the rare literature that focuses experimentally on the coordination problems caused by sunspot variables. It also extends the literature that focuses on coordination games that have a payoff-dominant and a...

This paper combines two strands of the experimental sunspot literature. It extends the rare literature that focuses experimentally on the coordination problems caused by sunspot variables. It also extends the literature that focuses on coordination games that have a payoff-dominant and a...

In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of selected sovereign Central European credit default swap (hereinafter referred to as “sovereign CDS” or “sCDS”) prices and investigate regional and European interdependencies among the economies under examination during the period 2008–2011. We...

This paper focuses on the relationship between sovereign credit default swaps (SCDS) referencing a group of selected developed and emerging economies during the recent sovereign debt crisis. Interdependence and contagion are found on the market dominated by a small number of big international...

The news-shock literature interprets empirical news-shock identifications as signals about future productivity. Under this view, changes in productivity cause changes in expectations. I investigate an alternative interpretation whereby changes in expectations cause changes in productivity. I...

In this paper we empirically examine a heterogeneous bounded rationality version of a hybrid New-Keynesian model. The model is estimated via the simulated method of moments using Euro Area data from 1975Q1 to 2009Q4. It is generally assumed that agents' beliefs display waves of optimism and...

Over the last 77 years (from 1935), all 7 cyclical maximums of the solar activity overlapped closely with the US recessions, thus predicting (or triggering?) 8 out of 13 recessions officially identified by NBER (including one “double-deep” recession). Over the last 64 years (from 1948), all...

The recent global financial crises has caused renewed interest in the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. In the general public and parts of academe Keynes is seen as the one economist who had very clear knowledge of the instability of markets, the volatility of economic activity and the...

We present an experiment in which extrinsic information (signals) may generate sunspot equilibria. The underlying coordination game has a unique symmetric non-sunspot equilibrium, which is also risk-dominant. Other equilibria can be ordered according to risk dominance. We compare treatments with...

We present an experiment in which extrinsic information (signals) may generate sunspot equilibria. The underlying coordination game has a unique symmetric non-sunspot equilibrium, which is also risk-dominant. Other equilibria can be ordered according to risk dominance. We introduce salient but...

I present a theoretical model where the economy endogenously adopts the technological ideas of a slowly evolving technological frontier, and show that the presence of a "technological gap" between unadopted ideas and current productivity can lead to multiple equilibria and therefore the...

In the article, linkages among sovereign CDS instruments in Central Europe are investigated. Special attention is paid to the change of causality patterns during the Hungarian and Greek crises. The results of the research reveal that the expectations do play a role in determining the prices of...

I distinguish two types of macroeconomic models. The first type are top-down models in which some or all agents are capable of understanding the whole picture and use this superior information to determine their optimal plans. The second type are bottom-up models in which all agents experience...

Capitalism is characterized by booms and busts. Periods of strong growth in output alternate with periods of declines in economic growth. Every macro-economic theory should attempt to explain these endemic business cycle movements. In this paper I present two paradigms that attempt to explain...

Separately, news and sunspot shocks have been shown empirically to be determinants of changes in expectations. This paper considers both of them together in a simple New Keynesian monetary business cycle model. A full set of rational expectations solutions is derived analytically. The analytical...

The Recent crises have seen very large spikes in asset price risk without dramatic shifts in fundamentals. We propose an explanation for these risk panics based on self-fulfilling shifts in risk made possible by a negative link between the current asset price and risk about the future asset...

A challenge facing the literature of equilibrium indeterminacy and sunspot-driven business cycle fluctuations based on increasing returns to scale in production is that the required degree of increasing returns for generating indeterminacy can be implausibly large and rise quickly with the...

We propose and estimate a model where unemployment fluctuations result from self-fulfilling changes in expected inflation (sunspot shocks) affecting nominal wage bargaining. Since the estimated parameters fall near the locus of Hopf bifurcations, country-specific expected inflation shocks can...

Following LeRoy and Werner (2001), we propose a definition of effectively complete asset markets in a model with multiple goods and multiple periods, and establish the first and second welfare theorems in such markets. As applications of the first welfare theorem, we derive the sunspot...

We develop a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents use simple but biased rules to forecast future output and inflation. This model generates endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (Animal Spirits") that are generated by the correlation of biased beliefs. We contrast the dynamics of...

We study the role of commitment in a version of the Diamond and Dybvig (JPE, 1983) model with no aggregate uncertainty. As is well known, the banking authority can eliminate the possibility of a bank run by committing to suspend payments to depositors if a run were to start. We show, however,...

We examine the role of expectations in the Great Moderation episode. We derive theoretical restrictions in a New-Keynesian model and test them using measures of expectations obtained from survey data, the Greenbook and bond markets. Expectations explain the dynamics of inflation and of interest...

A challenge to models of equilibrium indeterminacy based on increasing returns is that required increasing returns for generating indeterminacy can be implausibly large and rise quickly with the relative risk aversion in labor. We show that unsynchronized wage adjustment via a relative wage...

We reappraise the robustness of sunspot effects in overlapping-generations models. Azariadis’s well-known example economies have stationary, deterministic fundamentals (preferences, technologies, and endowments), yet sunspots affect multiple equilibria. And those equilibria are robust to...

I examine a model with an indeterminate equilibrium in which business cycles are driven by sunspot shocks. I focus on the possibility that the sunspot shocks reflect consumer confidence. I compute an implied series of sunspot shocks using the intertemporal Euler equation and interpret them as...

Calibrated models of the business cycle typically assume a certain frequency at which economic agents take decisions. In this paper I show that the local stability properties of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium macro models may depend on the length of a period in the model economy. This...

The type-agent core is a new solution concept for exchange economies with asymmetric information. It coincides with the set of equilibrium outcomes of a simple competitive screening game. Uninformed intermediaries help the agents to cooperate in an attempt to make some profit. The paper extends...

This study shows that China’s Consumer Expectation Index contains useful information about pure expectation shocks, which are unrelated to economic fundamentals. It turns out that such shocks are likely to be an important independent driver of industrial output growth.

Empirical studies of open-market share repurchases in the U.S. typically find a mean abnormal return around the announcement day of about 3%. In Germany share repurchases were highly restricted before May 1998. Since then firms have repurchased shares in the open market more than 250 times....

This paper derives new results on the effects of employing Taylor rules in economies that are subject to real market imperfections such as production externalities. Taylor rules that aggressively respond to output can eliminate sunspot equilibria that arise from the increasing returns. The paper...

The paper finds empirical evidence on the ripple effect of sunspots on the interwar German economy. It identifies a sequence of negative shocks to expectations for the 1927 to 1932 period. The artificial economy predicts the 1928-1932 depression and a long boom from 1933 onwards. Overall, a...

Using an efficiency-wage model, we examine the relationship between indeterminacy and unemployment insurance. It is shown that the less unemployment insurance is, the more likely equilibrium is to be indeterminate. Equilibrium can be indeterminate even without externalities or increasing...

We use the Detrended Cross-Correlation Analysis (DCCA) to investigate the influence of sun activity represented by sunspot numbers on one of the climate indicators, specifically rivers, represented by river flow fluctuation for Daugava, Holston, Nolichucky and French Broad rivers. The...

In nonconvex environments, a sunspot equilibrium can sometimes be destroyed by the introduction of new extrinsic information. We provide a simple test for determining whether or not a particular equilibrium survives, or is robust to, all possible re…nements of the state space. We use this...