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This paper studies the transmission mechanisms that underlie China's house price fluctuations using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. The model is estimated with Bayesian methods, which accounts well for business cycle properties of the housing market. Results show that shocks to housing productivity and the government land supply to housing developers are the primary contributors to house price volatility, accounting for 37% of house price volatility in the short run and 32% in the long run. The importance of housing valuation shocks and shocks to migration only increases in models without the supply side of the housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of idea production and knowledge capital for monetary business cycles. We construct a sticky‐wage model where workers produce goods based on firm‐specific knowledge capital and researchers develop new ideas aided by economywide knowledge. As a quantitatively small group in the economy, researchers are inconsequential for the real effects of monetary shocks when the returns to research are low. However, when the returns to research are high, the result can be overturned. Monetary shocks can have significant real effects, even if wages are perfectly flexible for workers, who are quantitatively dominant in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding international transmission mechanism that generates the world business cycle is of immense interest. In this paper, we compile a rich global dataset and utilize a trade‐linked structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model with a relatively realistic identification scheme to construct a worldwide dynamic interdependency system. Empirical results indicate that the trade‐linked SVAR system can largely capture the common dynamic properties of national business cycle fluctuations, providing a meaningful transmission foundation to the world business cycle derived from dynamic factor models. Based on the worldwide trade‐linked SVAR system, we further shed light on three crucial topics in international economics. The findings and methods in this paper help to evaluate the macroeconomic consequences of recent trade dispute between world major economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 1980s, standard models with two large open economies (i.e., the United States and Europe) provided plausible representations of the world economy. However, with the emergence of many developing countries since the 1990s, this approach no longer seems reasonable. In line with this change to the global economic environment, cross‐country output correlations between the United States and other countries have risen. This paper extends the standard two‐country model to many countries to show that doing so produces closer cross‐country correlations to the data. In particular, based on analytical investigation with a simple model and quantitative analysis with a more general model, I show that the cross‐country output correlation rises and the cross‐country consumption correlation falls as the number of countries in the two models increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mainstream real business cycle (RBC) model, labor can be viewed as temporary employment since the firm's demand for labor behaves directly in response to stochastic productivity shocks in each period. This paper provides a tractable way of analyzing fluctuations in permanent and temporary employment over the business cycle, as well as the underlying driving forces. This inclusion of heterogeneity helps reconcile the RBC model with the U.S. data given that temporary employees in general only account for a small proportion of total private‐sector employment (about 2%–3%). We draw an explicit division between permanent and temporary employment and resort to this separation to account for stylized facts that characterize a two‐tier labor market. In particular, with regard to the U.S. labor market, our benchmark model can well explain the motivating facts: (1) temporary employment is much more volatile than permanent employment, (2) the share of temporary employment (the ratio of temporary to aggregate employment) exhibits strong pro‐cyclicality, (3) permanent employment lags by two quarters on average, and (4) the correlation between temporary employment and output is stronger than that involving the permanent counterpart. The quantitative analysis suggests that our proposed channels explain the main facts well and the model further provides plausible reasoning for a firm's labor hoarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with banking, this paper first provides evidence that monetary policy reacted to bank loan growth in the United States during the Great Moderation. It then shows that the optimized simple interest-rate rule features no response to the growth of bank credit. However, the welfare loss associated to the empirical responsiveness is small. The sources of business cycle fluctuations are crucial in determining whether a 'leaning-against-the-wind' policy is optimal or not. In fact, the predominant role of supply shocks in the model gives rise to a trade-off between inflation and financial stabilization. ( JEL E32, E44, E52) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristics of firm-level risk over the cycle and across countries are studied in this paper. Low idiosyncratic firm-level risk is found to be a feature of highly developed, stable economies, whereas the countercyclicality of firm-level risk is associated with flexible as well as stable economies. These facts are uncovered with the help of a theoretical model where small, risk-averse firms display procyclical risk, whereas larger, risk-neutral firms have countercyclical risk patterns that depend on the rigidity of the business environment. The predictions of the model are then confirmed by the data using a large international firm-level database (ORBIS) together with the World Bank Doing Business Database, during the 'Great Recession' across 55 countries. The findings are critical for the growing literature of uncertainty driven business cycles, and show that firm-level uncertainty cannot be treated as an exogenous parameter. ( JEL D21, D22, E32, F44, L11, L25) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]