Financial intermediation and the international business cycle: The case of small countries with big banks

We examine the transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks in a two-country DSGE model. Assuming that the home country is small relative to the rest of world, we find that spillovers from foreign banking sector shocks are modest unless banks in the small country hold foreign banking assets. The correlation between home and foreign GDP rises with the exposure of the of the domestic banking sector to foreign bank assets.

Intuitive and Reliable Estimates of the Output Gap

The Beveridge-Nelson decomposition based on autoregressive models produces estimates of the output gap that are strongly at odds with widely held beliefs about transitory movements in economic activity. This is due to parameter estimates implying a high signal-to-noise ratio in terms of the variance of trend shocks as a fraction of the overall forecast error variance. When we impose a lower signal-to-noise ratio, the resulting Beveridge-Nelson filter produces a more intuitive estimate of the output gap that is large in amplitude and highly persistent, and it typically increases in expansions and decreases in recessions. Notably, our approach is also reliable in the sense of being subject to smaller revisions and predicting future output growth and inflation better than other trend-cycle decompositions that impose a low signal-to-noise ratio

A Note on the Business Cycles Implications of Trade in Intermediate Goods

International audienc

A Note on the Business Cycles Implications of Trade in Intermediate Goods

International audienc

The financial accelerator and monetary policy rules

The ability of financial frictions to amplify the output response of monetary policy, as in the financial accelerator model of Bernanke et al. (1999), is analyzed for a wider class of policy rules where the policy interest rate responds to both inflation and the output gap. When policy makers respond to the output gap as well as inflation, the standard financial accelerator model reacts less to an interest rate shock than does a comparable model without an operational financial accelerator mechanism. In recessions, when firm-speci fic volatility rises, financial acceleration due to financial frictions is further reduced, even under pure inflation targeting.

Using estimated models to assess nominal and real rigidities in the United Kingdom

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of inflation dynamics in the United Kingdom by estimating two dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models and assessing the role of nominal and real rigidities within them. We first obtain an empirical representation of the monetary transmission mechanism in the United Kingdom and then estimate the models by minimising the difference between this representation and its model equivalents. We find that both models can explain the data reasonably well without relying on undue amounts of price and wage stickiness.Minimum distance estimation; DSGE models; Nominal and real rigidities