Uncertainty about the future rises in recessions. But is uncertainty a source of business cycles or an endogenous response to them, and does type matter? We propose novel SVAR identification strategy address these questions via inequality constraints on structural shocks. find that sharply higher macroeconomic recessions often output shocks, while financial markets likely fluctuations. (JEL D81...

Usually housing is viewed in the context of consumption resulting from other economic drivers such as income and employment. Here, we study how two key local economic measures, the gross metropolitan product (GMP) and unemployment rate, respond to shocks in home value appreciation, home sales, and new construction, respectively. Our analysis relies upon a large panel of 158 metropolitan statist...

We examine the effect of financial integration on capital stocks and income per capita, explicitly taking into account the division of output between tradable and non-tradable goods. Capital per worker in a financially integrated country is shown to depend on the size and relative capital-intensity of the tradable sector. Using a panel of 67 countries over the period 1976-1999, we show a weakly...

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Despite strong economic growth, a "U"-curve unemployment phenomenon in Mauritius can be observed. Unemployment plunged from 21 percent to les...

Estimating Cross-Industry Cross-Country Models Using Benchmark Industry Characteristics* International industry data permits testing whether the industry-specific impact of cross-country differences in institutions or policies is consistent with economic theory. Empirical implementation requires specifying the industry characteristics that determine impact strength. Most of the literature has b...

We study the impact of the technological change on asset prices in a dynamic model economy that features a stochastic technology frontier and costly technology adoption. Firms adopt the latest technology embodied in new capital to reach the stochastic technology frontier, but this decision entails an adoption cost. The model predicts that firms operating with old capital are more risky and henc...

This paper provides new evidence about the link between firm level total factor productivity (TFP) and stock returns. We estimate firm level TFP and show that it is strongly related to several firm characteristics such as size, the book to market ratio, investment, and hiring rate. Low productivity firms earn a significant premium over high productivity firms in the following year, and this pre...

Wage hikes affect production costs and hence are usually analysed as supply shocks. There is, however, a long-standing debate about demand effects of wage variations. In this paper, we bring together these two arguments in a Kaldorian model with group specific saving rates and a production technology that allows for redistribution between workers and entrepreneurs following a wage hike. We ther...

Equilibrium Unemployment with Outsourcing and Wage Solidarity Under Labour Market Imperfections We evaluate the effects of outsourcing and wage solidarity on wage formation and equilibrium unemployment in a heterogeneous labour market, where wages are determined by a monopoly labour union. We find that outsourcing promotes the wage dispersion between the high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Wh...

This paper sets up a model to account for differences in total factor productivity due to differences in enforcement of contracts. Vertical specialization generates the need for intra-period credit, because final goods producers cannot pay their intermediate goods suppliers before they produce their final good. The paper shows that if there are enforcement problems, the capital distribution is ...