Does IMF Induce Political Business Cycles? An Empirical Analysis on Latin America's Indebted Countries.

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International Business Cycles: What Are the Facts?

Modern business cycle theory involves developing models that explain stylized facts. For this strategy to be successful, these facts should be well established. In this paper, we focus on the stylized facts of international business cycles. We use the generalized method of moments and quarterly data from nineteen industrialized countries to estimate pairwise cross-country and within-country correlations of macroeconomic aggregates. We calculate standard errors of the statistics for our unique panel of data and test hypotheses about the relative sizes of these correlations. We find a lower cross-country correlation of all aggregates and especially of consumption than in previous studies. The cross-country correlations of consumption, output and Solow residuals are not significantly different from one another over the whole sample, but there are significant differences in the post-1973 subsample.

A DSGE model with loss aversion in consumption and leisure: an explanation for business cycles asymmetries

In this chapter, an asymmetric DSGE model is built in order to account for asymmetries in business cycles. One of the most important contributions of this work is the construction of a general utility function which nests loss aversion, risk aversion and habits formation by means of a smooth transition function. The main idea behind this asymmetric utility function is that under recession the agents over-smooth consumption and leisure choices in order to prevent a huge deviation of them from the reference level of the utility; while under boom, the agents simply smooth consumption and leisure, but trying to be as far as possible from the reference level of utility. The simulations of this model by means of Perturbations Method show that it is possible to reproduce asymmetrical business cycles where recession (on shock) are stronger than booms and booms are more long-lasting than recession. One additional and unexpected result is a downward stickiness displayed by real wages. As a consequence of this, there is a more persistent fall in employment in recession than in boom. Thus, the model reproduces not only asymmetrical business cycles but also real stickiness and hysteresis.

Endogenous business cycles with frictional labour markets

We present a neoclassical model of capital accumulation with frictional labour markets. Under standard parameter values the equilibrium of the model is indeterminate and consequently displays expectations-driven business cycles – so-called endogenous business cycles. We study the properties of such cycles, and find that the model predicts the high autocorrelation in output growth and the hump-shaped impulse response of output found in US data – important features that existing endogenous real business cycle models fail to explain. The indeterminacy of the equilibrium stems from job search externalities and does not rely on increasing returns to scale as in most models.

Special interests and political business cycles

In this paper we bridge the gap between special interest politics and political business cycle literature. We build a framework where the interplay between the lobby power of special interest groups and the voting power of the majority of the population leads to political business cycles. We apply our set up to explain electoral cycles in government expenditure composition, aggregate expenditures and real exchange rates.

On the welfare costs of business cycles in the 20th century

Lucas (1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research, that the welfare cost of business cycles are relatively small. Using standard assumptions on preferences and a reasonable reduced form for consumption, we computed these welfare costs for the pre- and post-WWII era, using three alternative trend-cycle decomposition methods. The post-WWII period is very era this basic result is dramatically altered. For the Beveridge and Nelson decomposition, and reasonable preference parameter and discount values, we get a compensation of about 5% of consumption, which is by all means a sizable welfare cost (about US$ 1,000.00 a year).

Optimal exchange rate policy, optimal incomplete taxation and business cycles

Implementation and collapse of exchange rate pegging schemes are recur- rent events. A currency crisis (pegging) is usually followed by an economic downturn (boom). This essay explains why a benevolent government should pursue Þscal and monetary policies that lead to those recurrent currency crises and subsequent periods of pegging. It is shown that the optimal policy induces a competitive equilibrium that displays a boom in periods of below average de- valuation and a recession in periods of above average devaluation. A currency crisis (pegging) can be understood as an optimal policy answer to a recession (boom).

Business cycles in emerging economies : the role of interest rates

This paper documents the empirical relation between the interest rates that emerging economies face in international capital markets and their business cycles. It shows that the patterns observed in the data can be interpreted as the equilibrium of a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy, in which (i) firms have to pay for a fraction of the input bill before production takes place, and (ii) preferences generate a labor supply that is independent of the interest rate. In our sample, interest rates are strongly countercyclical, strongly positively correlated with net exports, and they lead the cycle. Output is very volatile and consumption is more volatile than output. The sample includes data for Argentina during 1983-2000 and for four other large emerging economies, Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Philippines, during 1994-2000. The model is calibrated to Argentina’s economy for the period 1983-1999. When the model is fed with actual US interest rates and the actual default spreads of Argentine sovereign interest rates, interest rates alone can explain forty percent of output fluctuations. When simulated technology shocks are added to the model, it can account for the main empirical regularities of Argentina’s economy during the period. A 1% increase in country risk causes a contemporaneous fall in output of 0.5 ’subsequent recovery. An increase in US rates causes output to fall by the same on impact and by almost 2% two years after the shock. The asymetry in the effect of shocks to US rates and country risk is due to the fact that US interest rates are more persistent than country risk and that there is a significant spillover effect from US interest rates to country risk.