scholarly journals Understanding the Great Recession

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Christiano ◽  
Martin S. Eichenbaum ◽  
Mathias Trabandt
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Factor Productivity ◽  
Working Capital ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Keynesian Model ◽  
Price Rigidities ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Joint Behavior

We argue that the vast bulk of movements in aggregate real economic activity during the Great Recession were due to financial frictions. We reach this conclusion by looking through the lens of an estimated New Keynesian model in which firms face moderate degrees of price rigidities, no nominal rigidities in wages, and a binding zero lower bound constraint on the nominal interest rate. Our model does a good job of accounting for the joint behavior of labor and goods markets, as well as inflation, during the Great Recession. According to the model the observed fall in total factor productivity and the rise in the cost of working capital played critical roles in accounting for the small drop in inflation that occurred during the Great Recession. (JEL E12, E23, E24, E31, E32, E52)

A LOOK AT THE U.S. BUSINESS CYCLES THROUGH THE LENS OF A TANK MODEL

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Yongseung Jung
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Tank Model ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Keynesian Model ◽  
Monetary Policy Shock ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cost

This paper sets up a two-agent new Keynesian model to explore the role of financial frictions over the post-war U.S. business cycle. The estimated model via maximum likelihood shows that the share of constrained households which has been substantial since the 1960s has significantly increased during the Great Recession. It also finds that the cost-push shock has been most important in explaining the behavior of the detrended output. The cost-push shock has also played a pivotal role in the fluctuation of inflation during the Great Recession, while the monetary policy shock which has been important in the behavior of inflation before the financial crisis has a negligible role during the Great Recession.

scholarly journals Forward Guidance and Heterogeneous Beliefs

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Andrade ◽  
Gaetano Gaballo ◽  
Eric Mengus ◽  
Benoît Mojon
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Heterogeneous Beliefs ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
New Keynesian Model ◽  
Survey Of Professional Forecasters ◽  
Forward Guidance ◽  
Keynesian Model ◽  
Guidance Policy ◽  
The Cost

Central banks’ announcements that rates are expected to remain low could signal either a weak macroeconomic outlook, which would slow expenditures, or a more accommodative stance, which may stimulate economic activity. We use the Survey of Professional Forecasters to show that, when the Fed gave guidance between 2011:III and 2012:IV, these two interpretations coexisted despite a consensus on low expected rates. We rationalize these facts in a New-Keynesian model where heterogeneous beliefs introduce a trade-off in forward guidance policy: leveraging on the optimism of those who believe in monetary easing comes at the cost of inducing excess pessimism in non-believers. (JEL D83, E12, E43, E52, E58, E65)

scholarly journals Inflation in the Great Recession and New Keynesian Models

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Del Negro ◽  
Marc P. Giannoni ◽  
Frank Schorfheide
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Financial Frictions ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Dsge Models ◽  
Dsge Model ◽  
Macroeconomic Variables ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
New Keynesian Models

Several prominent economists have argued that existing DSGE models cannot properly account for the evolution of key macroeconomic variables during and following the recent Great Recession. We challenge this argument by showing that a standard DSGE model with financial frictions available prior to the recent crisis successfully predicts a sharp contraction in economic activity along with a protracted but relatively modest decline in inflation, following the rise in financial stress in 2008:IV. The model does so even though inflation remains very dependent on the evolution of economic activity and of monetary policy. (JEL E12, E31, E32, E37, E44, E52, G01)

scholarly journals ENTREPRENEURS, FINANCIERS, AND BOOM–BUST CYCLES

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 785-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takuma Kunieda ◽  
Akihisa Shibata
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Factor Productivity ◽  
Business Cycle Theory ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Dynamic General Equilibrium Model ◽  
Parameter Values ◽  
Financial Market Imperfections

In this paper, a dynamic general equilibrium model with infinitely lived entrepreneurs and financiers is developed to investigate a possible mechanism that explains business cycles and financial crises. The highest growth rate is achievable only if financiers coexist with entrepreneurs, given a certain extent of financial market imperfections. However, if financiers coexist with entrepreneurs, the economy is highly likely to face a financial crisis at certain parameter values. These two-sided implications of the coexistence of entrepreneurs and financiers explain why both instability and high growth are frequently observed in modern economies. Furthermore, our model can obtain countercyclical movements in total factor productivity growth that cannot be explained by the standard real business cycle theory but were observed in the Great Recession of 2007–2008.

scholarly journals Inflation in the Great Recession and New Keynesian Models

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Del Negro ◽  
Marc Giannoni ◽  
Frank Schorfheide
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
New Keynesian Models

scholarly journals Did Smaller Firms Face Higher Costs of Credit During the Great Recession? A Vector Error Correction Analysis with Structural Breaks

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Louisa Kammerer ◽  
Miguel Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Lower Bound ◽  
Error Correction ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Structural Breaks ◽  
Zero Lower Bound ◽  
Large Firms ◽  
Vector Error Correction ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Vector Error ◽  
The Cost

This paper examines the challenges firms (and policymakers) encounter when confronted by a recession at the zero lower bound, when traditional monetary policy is ineffective in the face of deteriorated balance sheets and high costs of credit. Within the larger body of literature, this paper focuses on the cost of credit during a recession, which constrains smaller firms from borrowing and investing, thus magnifying the contraction. Extending and revising a model originally developed by Walker (2010) and estimated by Pandey and Ramirez (2012), this study uses a Vector Error Correction Model with structural breaks to analyze the effects of relevant economic and financial factors on the cost of credit intermediation for small and large firms. Specifically, it tests whether large firms have advantageous access to credit, especially during recessions. The findings suggest that during the Great Recession of 2007-09 the cost of credit rose for small firms while it decreased for large firms, ceteris paribus. From the results, the paper assesses alternative ways in which the central bank can respond to a recession facing the zero lower bound.

scholarly journals The Aggregate Implications of Regional Business Cycles

Econometrica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (6) ◽  
pp. 1789-1833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Beraja ◽  
Erik Hurst ◽  
Juan Ospina
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycles ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Aggregate Data ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Aggregate Fluctuations ◽  
Wage Dynamics ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Wage Stickiness

Making inferences about aggregate business cycles from regional variation alone is difficult because of economic channels and shocks that differ between regional and aggregate economies. However, we argue that regional business cycles contain valuable information that can help discipline models of aggregate fluctuations. We begin by documenting a strong relationship across U.S. states between local employment and wage growth during the Great Recession. This relationship is much weaker in U.S. aggregates. Then, we present a methodology that combines such regional and aggregate data in order to estimate a medium‐scale New Keynesian DSGE model. We find that aggregate demand shocks were important drivers of aggregate employment during the Great Recession, but the wage stickiness necessary for them to account for the slow employment recovery and the modest fall in aggregate wages is inconsistent with the flexibility of wages we observe across U.S. states. Finally, we show that our methodology yields different conclusions about the causes of aggregate employment and wage dynamics between 2007 and 2014 than either estimating our model with aggregate data alone or performing back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations that directly extrapolate from well‐identified regional elasticities.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Household Income Volatility

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Dynan ◽  
Douglas Elmendorf ◽  
Daniel Sichel
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Longitudinal Survey ◽  
Income Volatility ◽  
Transfer Payments ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Using a representative longitudinal survey of U.S. households, we find that household income became noticeably more volatile between the early 1970s and the late 2000s despite the moderation seen in aggregate economic activity during this period. We estimate that the standard deviation of percent changes in household income rose about 30 percent between 1971 and 2008. This widening in the distribution of percent changes was concentrated in the tails. The share of households experiencing a 50 percent plunge in income over a two-year period climbed from about 7 percent in the early 1970s to more than 12 percent in the early 2000s before retreating to 10 percent in the run-up to the Great Recession. Households’ labor earnings and transfer payments have both become more volatile over time. As best we can tell, the rise in the volatility of men’s earnings appears to owe both to greater volatility in earnings per hour and in hours worked.

scholarly journals Information, Animal Spirits, and the Meaning of Innovations in Consumer Confidence

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 (4) ◽  
pp. 1343-1377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B Barsky ◽  
Eric R Sims
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Consumer Confidence ◽  
Indirect Inference ◽  
Impulse Responses ◽  
Animal Spirits ◽  
Keynesian Model ◽  
Incremental Information ◽  
The Relationship

Innovations to consumer confidence convey incremental information about economic activity far into the future. Does this reflect a causal effect of animal spirits on economic activity, or news about exogenous future productivity received by consumers? Using indirect inference, we study the impulse responses to confidence innovations in conjunction with an appropriately augmented New Keynesian model. While news, animal spirits, and pure noise all contribute to confidence innovations, the relationship between confidence and subsequent activity is almost entirely reflective of the news component. Confidence innovations are well characterized as noisy measures of changes in expected productivity growth over a relatively long horizon. (JEL D12, D83, D84, E12)

scholarly journals DOES INFLATION TARGETING MATTER? AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Cornand ◽  
Cheick Kader M'baye
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Inflation Targeting ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Inflation Target ◽  
Keynesian Model ◽  
Inflation Stabilization

We use laboratory experiments with human subjects to test the relevance of different inflation-targeting regimes. In particular and within the standard New Keynesian model, we evaluate to what extent communication of the inflation target is relevant to the success of inflation targeting. We find that if the central bank cares only about inflation stabilization, announcing the inflation target does not make a difference in terms of macroeconomic performance compared with a standard active monetary policy. However, if the central bank also cares about the stabilization of economic activity, communicating the target helps to reduce the volatility of inflation, interest rate, and output gap, although their average levels are not affected. This finding is consistent with the theoretical literature and provides a rationale for the adoption of a flexible inflation-targeting regime.

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