The Impacts of Credit Standards on Aggregate Fluctuations in a Small Open Economy: The Role of Monetary Policy

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.

Sectoral Media Focus and Aggregate Fluctuations

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)

A direct measure of subjective business uncertainty

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.

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

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.

Behavioral and Experimental Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis: A Complex Systems Approach

This survey discusses behavioral and experimental macroeconomics, emphasizing a complex systems perspective. The economy consists of boundedly rational heterogeneous agents who do not fully understand their complex environment and use simple decision heuristics. Central to our survey is the question of under which conditions a complex macro-system of interacting agents may or may not coordinate on the rational equilibrium outcome. A general finding is that under positive expectations feedback (strategic complementarity)—where optimistic (pessimistic) expectations can cause a boom (bust)—coordination failures are quite common. The economy is then rather unstable, and persistent aggregate fluctuations arise strongly amplified by coordination on trend-following behavior leading to (almost-)self-fulfilling equilibria. Heterogeneous expectations and heuristics switching models match this observed micro and macro behavior surprisingly well. We also discuss policy implications of this coordination failure on the perfectly rational aggregate outcome and how policy can help to manage the self-organization process of a complex economic system. (JEL C63, C90, D91, E12, E71, G12)