The Role of Policymakers in Business Cycle Fluctuations

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Granato ◽  
Man Chiu Sunny Wong
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations

scholarly journals News-Driven Business Cycles: Insights and Challenges

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Beaudry ◽  
Franck Portier
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycles ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Economic Fluctuations ◽  
Aggregate Fluctuations ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Many

There is a widespread belief that changes in expectations may be an important independent driver of economic fluctuations. The news view of business cycles offers a formalization of this perspective. In this paper we discuss mechanisms by which changes in agents' information, due to the arrival of news, can cause business cycle fluctuations driven by expectational change, and we review the empirical evidence aimed at evaluating their relevance. In particular, we highlight how the literature on news and business cycles offers a coherent way of thinking about aggregate fluctuations, while at the same time we emphasize the many challenges that must be addressed before a proper assessment of the role of news in business cycles can be established. (JEL D83, D84, E13, E32, O33)

scholarly journals The role of inventories for the propagation of aggregate fluctuations: lessons for Bulgaria (1999–2019)

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Vasilev
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Aggregate Fluctuations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Consumption Volatility ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Rbc Models ◽  
Quantitative Importance

PurposeIn this study, inventories are introduced as a productive input into a real-business-cycle (RBC) setup augmented with the government.Design/methodology/approachThe model is calibrated to Bulgarian data for the period 1999–2019. The quantitative importance of the presence of inventories is investigated.FindingsThe quantitative effect of inventories is found to be important: decreasing consumption volatility and increasing employment variability. Those results, however, are at the expense of decreasing wage volatility and increasing investment volatility, and generally worsening the contemporaneous correlations of the main variables with output.Originality/valueFluctuations in inventory levels matter for business cycle fluctuations in Bulgaria, which is a novel result. Still, there is a need for more research on the incorporation of inventories into RBC models to better fit the Bulgarian experience.

ASYMMETRY AND THE AMPLITUDE OF BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS: A QUANTITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL FRICTIONS

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj Atolia ◽  
John Gibson ◽  
Milton Marquis
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycles ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Financial Frictions ◽  
Quantitative Investigation ◽  
Macroeconomic Volatility ◽  
Access To Credit ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations ◽  
Key Features ◽  
The Business Cycle

We examine the quantitative significance of financial frictions that reduce firms' access to credit in explaining asymmetric business cycles characterized by disproportionately severe downturns. Using rate spread data to calibrate the severity of these frictions, we successfully match several key features of U.S. data. Specifically, although output and consumption are relatively symmetric (with output being slightly more asymmetric), investment and hours worked display significant asymmetry over the business cycle. We also demonstrate that our financial frictions are capable of significantly amplifying adverse shocks during severe downturns. Although the data suggest that these frictions are only active occasionally, our results indicate that they are still a significant source of macroeconomic volatility over the business cycle.

Essays on financial sector and optimal monetary policy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ting Wang
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Financial Sector ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Financial Shocks ◽  
External Finance ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations ◽  
The Relationship

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The 2007-2009 economic events have renewed interests in the relationship between the financial sector and the macroeconomy and suggested that shocks originated in the financial sector may be a potential source of business cycle fluctuations. In this regard, this dissertation focuses on quantifying and assessing the role of shocks originated from the financial sector in driving business cycle fluctuations and how monetary policy could possibly respond from a welfare prospective. The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter attempts to model the relationship between the financial sector and the macroeconomy theoretically. Specifically, I build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model by incorporating a financial sector with frictions between investors and banks. The existence of such frictions affect the healthiness of the financial sector and increase its riskiness, whereas would not affect those of the non-financial sector by much. I regard this type of frictions as supply-side financial shocks that are originated in the financial sector. Under this framework, the external finance premium in the financial sector can be determined endogenously. To study how the financial shocks would affect the dynamics of the model, impulse responses are used to show that the inclusion of those financial shocks yield larger amplification effects. Thus the model is able to generate higher volatility in aggregate outcomes, especially in the financial sector. This provides theoretical grounds to study the role of supply-side financial shocks for the next two chapters. Chapter two seeks to quantify empirically the effects of the financial shocks on the macroeconomy in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. Based on the model implications derived from Chapter one, two types of financial shocks can be discriminated|the demand-side financial shock that comes from the entrepreneurial sector and the supply-side financial shock that comes from the financial sector. The identification strategy is that these two types of shocks affect the standards deviation of the equity returns in financial and entrepreneurial sectors in opposite directions. The overall SVAR results show that the effects of financial shocks on the real economic activities are non-trivial, although not major. In particular, the supply-side financial shocks originating from the financial sector explain a non-negligible part of the variabilities for the key macro variables; whereas for the financial variables, they are the main drivers, especially during the 2007-2009 crisis period. Chapter three studies how monetary policy should respond to this type of supplyside financial shocks from a prospective of social welfare. In particular, I consider a Taylor-type monetary policy rule augmented with a financial variable|the external finance premium. By doing so, it allows the central bank to react to the changes in the riskiness of the financial sector, in addition to the conventional output and inflation targets. The welfare results show that it is optimal for the central bank to respond to the financial variable. In other words, when there are shocks originated in the financial sector, the riskiness of the financial sector increases, and so do the external financing costs and the external finance premium in the financial sector. The banks' balance sheet conditions worsen and the central bank should cut its policy rate. The welfare analysis also implies that the inflation stabilization is still the most important target of the central bank, which in line with the literature that emphasizes the importance of inflation targeting.

scholarly journals Microeconomic Origins of Macroeconomic Tail Risks

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daron Acemoglu ◽  
Asuman Ozdaglar ◽  
Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Normal Distribution ◽  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Business Cycle Fluctuations ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Economic Downturns

Using a multisector general equilibrium model, we show that the interplay of idiosyncratic microeconomic shocks and sectoral heterogeneity results in systematic departures in the likelihood of large economic downturns relative to what is implied by the normal distribution. Such departures can emerge even though GDP fluctuations are approximately normally distributed away from the tails, highlighting the different nature of large economic downturns from regular business-cycle fluctuations. We further demonstrate the special role of input-output linkages in generating tail comovements, whereby large recessions involve not only significant GDP contractions, but also large simultaneous declines across a wide range of industries. (JEL D57, E16, E23, E32)

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