Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction -- 2. Facts. 2.1. Defining a business cycle. 2.2. Stylized facts. 2.3. The Euro area business cycle. 2.4. Is there a world business cycle? 2.5. Historical business cycles -- 3. Models of business cycles. 3.1. An RBC model. 3.2. A numerical solution. 3.3. Initial criticisms. 3.4. "Puzzles". 3.5. The source of the shocks -- 4. International business cycles. 4.1. Facts. 4.2. The role of international risk sharing. 4.3. Other extensions. 4.4. Puzzles revisited -- 5. New keynesian models. 5.1. The basic model. 5.2. Empirical evidence -- 6. Business cycles in emerging market economies. 6.1. A small open-economy model of emerging market business cycles. 6.2. Do shocks to trend productivity explain business cycles in emerging market economies? -- 7. Matching the model to the data. 7.1. Dynamic factor analysis. 7.2. GMM estimation approaches. 7.3. The calibration versus estimation debate. 7.4. DSGE modeling. 8. Future areas for research.

We examine the role of spatial spillovers in economic growth for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We explicitly model spatial interactions that may arise from geography, bilateral trade, or institutional similarities, and ask how much they are likely to matter for growth externalities and spillover effects. We find that the economic growth of a MENA country is positively affected by the economic growth of countries that are geographically close and that have similar institutional characteristics. The spillover effects of growth are due to economic activities in countries that trade primarily in oil, which accounts for the gap in spillover effects due to institutional similarity between resource‐rich and resource‐poor countries in the MENA region. However, trade linkages matter less. Where they do have an effect, it is through the local range effects of a spatially lagged explanatory variable capturing the effects of the trade balance on growth.

We examine the relationship between macroeconomic, institutional, and cultural indicators and cyclical fluctuations for European, Middle Eastern and North African Mediterranean countries. Mediterranean cycles are different from EU cycles: the duration of expansions is shorter; the amplitude and the output costs of recessions are larger; and cyclical synchronization is smaller. Differences in macroeconomic and institutional indicators partly account for the relative differences in cyclical synchronization. By contrast, differences in cultural indicators account for relative differences in the persistence, the volatility and the synchronization of cyclical fluctuations. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have begun to dominate the field of macroeconomic theory and policy-making. These models describe the evolution of macroeconomic activity as a recursive sequence of outcomes based upon the optimal decision rules of rational households, firms and policy-makers. Whilst posing a micro-founded dynamic optimisation problem for agents under uncertainty, such models have been shown to be both analytically tractable and sufficiently rich for meaningful policy analysis in a wide class of macroeconomic problems, for example, monetary and fiscal policy, economic cycles and growth and capital flows. This volume collects specially commissioned papers from leading researchers, which pull together some of the key results in diverse areas. This book will promote research using optimising models and inform researchers, post-graduate students and economists in policy-oriented organisations of some of the key findings and policy implications.