Download or read book Uncertainty Expectations and the Business Cycle written by Jan Hannes Lang and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis adds to the recent quantitative literature that considers variations in uncertainty as impulses driving the business cycle. In chapter one a flexible partial equilibrium model that features heterogeneous firms, uncertainty shocks and various forms of capital adjustment costs is built in order to reassess whether temporarily higher uncertainty can cause recessions. It is then shown that while uncertainty shocks to demand can cause the bust, rebound and overshoot dynamics reminiscent of recessions, uncertainty shocks to total factor productivity are likely to lead to considerable and prolonged booms in economic activity. The reason for this result is that while the expectational effect of uncertainty shocks is negative and similar in magnitude for both types of uncertainty shocks, the positive distributional effect is an order of magnitude larger for total factor productivity than for demand. Chapter two then derives and implements an identification strategy for uncertainty shocks within a Structural Vector Autoregression framework that is consistent with the way these shocks are commonly modeled in the literature. For the US it is shown that such model consistent uncertainty shocks lead to considerable booms in investment and employment and only explain a small fraction of the variation in the cross-sectional sales variance. Once uncertainty shocks are identified as the shocks that only affect dispersion upon impact, they cause a moderate drop, rebound and overshoot of investment and a large increase in the cross-sectional dispersion of revenues. The results suggest that the standard timing assumption that the expectational effect of uncertainty shocks leads the distributional effect seems questionable. Finally, chapter three analyses endogenous variations in uncertainty and their effect on aggregate dynamics that result from imperfect information in the presence of occasional regime shifts. In a tentative model parameterization to the German manufacturing industry during the Financial Crisis it is shown that after a temporary regime shift imperfect information leads endogenously to higher forecast standard errors compared to full information, as well as higher cross-sectional dispersion of mean forecasts and forecast standard errors. It is then shown that these endogenous variations in uncertainty can lead to considerable downward amplification and some propagation of aggregate investment and revenues during a temporary downward regime shift.
Download or read book Time Expectations and Uncertainty in Economics written by George Lennox Sharman Shackle and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time, Expectations and Uncertainty in Economics presents in one volume a selection of those papers which best represent Professor Shackle's important and lasting contribution to economics.
Download or read book Uncertainty and Unemployment written by Sangyup Choi and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-02-23 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We study the role of uncertainty shocks in explaining unemployment dynamics, separating out the role of aggregate and sectoral channels. Using S&P500 data from the first quarter of 1957 to third quarter of 2014, we construct separate indices to measure aggregate and sectoral uncertainty and compare their effects on the unemployment rate in a standard macroeconomic vector autoregressive (VAR) model. We find that aggregate uncertainty leads to an immediate increase in unemployment, with the impact dissipating within a year. In contrast, sectoral uncertainty has a long-lived impact on unemployment, with the peak impact occurring after two years. The results are consistent with a view that the impact of aggregate uncertainty occurs through a “wait-and-see” mechanism while increased sectoral uncertainty raises unemployment by requiring greater reallocation across sectors.
Download or read book Hysteresis and Business Cycles written by Ms.Valerie Cerra and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.
Download or read book Business Cycles written by Victor Zarnowitz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the most complete collection available of the work of Victor Zarnowitz, a leader in the study of business cycles, growth, inflation, and forecasting.. With characteristic insight, Zarnowitz examines theories of the business cycle, including Keynesian and monetary theories and more recent rational expectation and real business cycle theories. He also measures trends and cycles in economic activity; evaluates the performance of leading indicators and their composite measures; surveys forecasting tools and performance of business and academic economists; discusses historical changes in the nature and sources of business cycles; and analyzes how successfully forecasting firms and economists predict such key economic variables as interest rates and inflation.
Download or read book Uncertainty and Economics written by Christian Müller-Kademann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is set against the assumption that humans' unique feature is their infinite creativity, their ability to reflect on their deeds and to control their actions. These skills give rise to genuine uncertainty in society and hence in the economy. Here, the author sets out that uncertainty must take centre stage in all analyses of human decision making and therefore in economics. Uncertainty and Economics carefully defines a taxonomy of uncertainty and argues that it is only uncertainty in its most radical form which matters to economics. It shows that uncertainty is a powerful concept that not only helps to resolve long-standing economic puzzles but also unveils serious contradictions within current, popular economic approaches. It argues that neoclassical, real business cycle, or new-Keynesian economics must be understood as only one way to circumvent the analytical challenges posed by uncertainty. Instead, embracing uncertainty offers a new analytical paradigm which, in this book, is applied to standard economic topics such as institutions, money, the Lucas critique, fiscal policy and asset pricing. Through applying a concise uncertainty paradigm, the book sheds new light on human decision making at large. Offering policy conclusions and recommendations for further theoretical and applied research, it will be of great interest to postgraduate students, academics and policy makers.
Download or read book Uncertainty and Expectations in Economics written by J.L. Ford and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Business Cycles and Financial Crises written by A. W. Mullineux and published by Bookboon. This book was released on 1990 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Business Cycles and Depressions written by David Glasner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts define, review, and evaluate economic fluctuations Economic and business uncertainty dominate today's economic analyses. This new Encyclopedia illuminates the subject by offering 323 original articles on every major aspect of business cycles, fluctuations, financial crises, recessions, and depressions. The work of more than 200 experts, including many of the leading researchers in the field, the articles cover a broad range of subjects, including capsule biographies of leading economists born before 1920. Individual entries explore banking panics, the cobweb cycle, consumer durables, the depression of 1937-1938, Otto Eckstein, Friedrich Engels, experimental price bubbles, forced savings, lass-Steagall Act, Friedrich hagen, qualitative indicators, use of macro-econometric models, monetary neutrality, Phillips Curve, Paul Samuelson, Say's law, supply-side recessions, James Tokin, trend and random wages, Thorstein Veblen, worker-job turnover, and more.
Download or read book Unequal We Stand written by Jonathan Heathcote and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors conducted a systematic empirical study of cross-sectional inequality in the U.S., integrating data from various surveys. The authors follow the mapping suggested by the household budget constraint from individual wages to individual earnings, to household earnings, to disposable income, and, ultimately, to consumption and wealth. They document a continuous and sizable increase in wage inequality over the sample period. Changes in the distribution of hours worked sharpen the rise in earnings inequality before 1982, but mitigate its increase thereafter. Taxes and transfers compress the level of income inequality, especially at the bottom of the distribution, but have little effect on the overall trend. Charts and tables. This is a print-on-demand publication; it is not an original.
Download or read book China s Growing Role in World Trade written by Robert C. Feenstra and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, China's economic dynamism has generated considerable attention and concern in the United States and beyond. While some analysts have warned of the potential pitfalls of China's rise—the loss of jobs, for example—others have highlighted the benefits of new market and investment opportunities for US firms. Bringing together an expert group of contributors, China's Growing Role in World Trade undertakes an empirical investigation of the effects of China's new status. The essays collected here provide detailed analyses of the microstructure of trade, the macroeconomic implications, sector-level issues, and foreign direct investment. This volume's careful examination of micro data in light of established economic theories clarifies a number of misconceptions, disproves some conventional wisdom, and documents data patterns that enhance our understanding of China's trade and what it may mean to the rest of the world.
Download or read book Really Uncertain Business Cycles written by Nick Bloom and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles. First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Second, we quantify the impact of time-varying uncertainty on the economy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. We find that reasonably calibrated uncertainty shocks can explain drops and rebounds in GDP of around 3%. Moreover, we show that increased uncertainty alters the relative impact of government policies, making them initially less effective and then subsequently more effective
Download or read book Rethinking Expectations written by Roman Frydman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book originated from a 2010 conference marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the landmark "Phelps volume," Microeconomic Foundations of Employment and Inflation Theory, a book that is often credited with pioneering the currently dominant approach to macroeconomic analysis. However, in their provocative introductory essay, Roman Frydman and Edmund Phelps argue that the vast majority of macroeconomic and finance models developed over the last four decades derailed, rather than built on, the Phelps volume's "microfoundations" approach. Whereas the contributors to the 1970 volume recognized the fundamental importance of according market participants' expectations an autonomous role, contemporary models rely on the rational expectations hypothesis (REH), which rules out such a role by design. The financial crisis that began in 2007, preceded by a spectacular boom and bust in asset prices that REH models implied could never happen, has spurred a quest for fresh approaches to macroeconomic analysis. While the alternatives to REH presented in Rethinking Expectations differ from the approach taken in the original Phelps volume, they are notable for returning to its major theme: understanding aggregate outcomes requires according expectations an autonomous role. In the introductory essay, Frydman and Phelps interpret the various efforts to reconstruct the field--some of which promise to chart its direction for decades to come. The contributors include Philippe Aghion, Sheila Dow, George W. Evans, Roger E. A. Farmer, Roman Frydman, Michael D. Goldberg, Roger Guesnerie, Seppo Honkapohja, Katarina Juselius, Enisse Kharroubi, Blake LeBaron, Edmund S. Phelps, John B. Taylor, Michael Woodford, and Gylfi Zoega.
Download or read book Uncertainty Expectations and Asset Price Dynamics written by Fredj Jawadi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in honor of Emeritus Professor Georges Prat (University of Paris Nanterre, France), this book includes contributions from eminent authors on a range of topics that are of interest to researchers and graduates, as well as investors and portfolio managers. The topics discussed include the effects of information and transaction costs on informational and allocative market efficiency, bubbles and stock price dynamics, paradox of rational expectations and the principle of limited information, uncertainty and expectation hypotheses, oil price dynamics, and nonlinearity in asset price dynamics.
Download or read book Cycles Growth and the Great Recession written by Annalisa Cristini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cycles, Growth and the Great Recession is a collection of papers that assess the nature and role of the business cycle in contemporary economies. These assessments are made in the context of the financial market instability that distinguishes the Great Recession from previous post-war slowdowns. Theorists and applied scholars in the fields of economics and mathematical economics discuss various approaches to understanding cycles and growth, and present mathematical and applied macro models to show how uncertainty shapes cycles by affecting the economic agent choice. Also included is an empirical section that investigates how the Great Recession affected households’ housing wealth, labour productivity and migration decisions. This book aims to: Propose a novel understanding of the business cycle by comparing the approaches of various scholars, starting from Hyman Minsky and Piero Ferri. Show that uncertainty is a main feature of the business cycle that affects decision-making and economic behaviour in general. Explain with mathematical models how the behaviour of economic agents can lead to cyclical paths for modern developed economies. Augment theory with empirical analysis of some central issues related to the Great Recession. This book comprises an original view of such widely discussed subjects as business cycles, uncertainty, economic growth and the Great Recession, constructed around theory, models and applications.
Download or read book Really Uncertain Business Cycles written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles. First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Second, we quantify the impact of time-varying uncertainty on the economy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. We find that reasonably calibrated uncertainty shocks can explain drops and rebounds in GDP of around 3%. Moreover, we show that increased uncertainty alters the relative impact of government policies, making them initially less effective and then subsequently more effective.
Download or read book Uncertainty and Contradiction written by Michalis Nikiforos and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present paper presents a discussion of the forces at play behind the economic fluctuations in the medium run and their relation with the short-run macroeconomic equilibrium. The business cycle is the result of two separate phenomena. On the one hand there is the instability, which is caused by the discrepancy between the expected and the realized outcomes. On the other hand, this instability is contained by the inherent contradictions of capitalism; the upswing carries “within it the seeds of its own destruction”. The same happens with the downswing. A formal exposition of these insights is provided. It is discussed how the formulation of this mechanism resembles the simple harmonic motion of Classical mechanics. Finally, an empirical evaluation is provided.
