The determinants of aggregate fluctuations: The role of firm‐borrowing channels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Apergis ◽  
Sayantan Ghosh Dastidar
2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Beaudry ◽  
Franck Portier

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)


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Vasilev

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.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 845-855 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Kuang

This paper introduces imperfect knowledge and learning behavior of economic agents into the Kiyotaki and Moore model and studies the interaction of agents' collateral price beliefs, collateral constraint, and aggregate economic activity over the business cycle. It establishes the E-stability condition and the convergence of the real time learning process. In addition, it shows that learning strengthens the role of collateral constraints in aggregate fluctuations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Constantine Angyridis ◽  
Panagiotis Tsintzos

This paper considers an endogenous growth model with public capital and government debt. In setting the level of public investment each period, the government is assumed to follow two commonly used in the growth literature fiscal rules: public investment is either equal to a constant fraction of output or equal to a constant share of tax revenues. In our model, we allow revenues to be raised by the government through progressive income taxation and bonds issue. For both fiscal rules, we show that the potential occurrence of either indeterminacy or instability crucially depends on whether the government is a debtor or a creditor. In particular, government indebtedness causes the economy to be prone to either belief-driven aggregate fluctuations or unstable dynamics. This is a novel result in the related literature which has largely overlooked the role of public debt as a possible contributing factor to the presence of indeterminacy and instability in growth models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 1375-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasco M. Carvalho ◽  
Basile Grassi

Do large firm dynamics drive the business cycle? We answer this question by developing a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations caused by firm-level disturbances alone. We show that a standard heterogeneous firm dynamics setup already contains in it a theory of the business cycle, without appealing to aggregate shocks. We offer an analytical characterization of the law of motion of the aggregate state in this class of models, the firm size distribution, and show that aggregate output and productivity dynamics display: (i ) persistence, (ii ) volatility, and (iii ) time-varying second moments. We explore the key role of moments of the firm size distribution, and, in particular, the role of large firm dynamics, in shaping aggregate fluctuations, theoretically, quantitatively, and in the data. (JEL D21, D22, D24, E32, L11)


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (12) ◽  
pp. 3872-3922
Author(s):  
Ryan Chahrour ◽  
Kristoffer Nimark ◽  
Stefan Pitschner

We formalize the editorial role of news media in a multisector economy and show that media can be an independent source of business cycle fluctuations, even when they report accurate information. Public reporting about a subset of sectoral developments that are newsworthy but unrepresentative causes firms across all sectors to hire too much or too little labor. We construct historical measures of US sectoral news coverage and use them to calibrate our model. Time-varying media focus generates demand-like fluctuations that are orthogonal to productivity, even in the absence of non-TFP shocks. Presented with historical sectoral productivity, the model reproduces the 2009 Great Recession. (JEL D22, D83, E32, L82)


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Glocker ◽  
Werner Hölzl

Abstract We present an uncertainty measure that is based on a business survey in which uncertainty is captured directly by a qualitative question on subjective uncertainty regarding expectations. Uncertainty perceptions display persistence at the firm level and changes are associated with past business assessments and expectations. While our uncertainty measure correlates with commonly used alternatives, it is superior in forecasting and suggests a larger role of uncertainty shocks for aggregate fluctuations. Its informational content is highest when considering smaller firms or firms with a low growth rate. Our results confirm the feasibility of constructing uncertainty measures from business survey questions that elicit information on uncertainty of respondents directly.


Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Hai Le

Empirical evidence demonstrates that credit standards, including lending margins and collateral requirements, move in a countercyclical direction. In this study, we construct a small open economy model with financial frictions to generate the countercyclical movement in credit standards. Our analysis demonstrates that countercyclical fluctuations in credit standards work as an amplifier of shocks to the economy. In particular, the existence of endogenous credit standards increases output volatility by 21%. We also suggest three alternative tools for policymakers to dampen the effects of endogenous credit standards on macroeconomic volatility. First, the introduction of credit growth to the monetary policy succeeds in counteracting the fluctuation of lending, and thus decreasing the additional volatility considerably. Second, the exchange rate augmented monetary policy, if well-constructed, is considered an efficient tool to eliminate most of the additional fluctuations caused by deep habits in the banking sector. Finally, the introduction of the foreign interest augmented policy also proves successful in dampening the effect of endogenous movements in lending standards.


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