JIM COSTAIN
Papers on Business Cycles

Currently Beatriz de Blas Pérez and I are investigating why the vector autoregressions of Galí (1999) and Beaudry and Portier (2003) give conflicting estimates of the importance of technology shocks for the business cycle.

Recently I have studied whether job matching models are consistent with the cyclical behavior of labor markets ( Employment Fluctuations with Downwards Wage Rigidity, joint with Marcel Jansen), and with the observed effects of labor market policies ( BCs, UI, and the Calibration of Matching Models, with Michael Reiter).

Michael Reiter and I used our matching model to study the costs of business cycles, and optimal fiscal policy, in Stabilization versus Insurance. We find that in a real business cycle model with imperfect insurance, procyclical taxes should be used to stabilize the cycle.

Earlier, I showed how portfolio choice under imperfect insurance could give rise to strategic complementarities and thus amplify fluctuation, in A Simple Model of Multiple Equilibria Based on Risk. Michael Reiter and I attempted to solve an infinite-horizon version of this same model in Computing Business Cycles with Endogenous Risk, but we were unable to obtain a sufficiently accurate solution.

See ALL my papers || Unemployment insurance || Business cycles || Strategic complementarities || Back to Jim's homepage

Productivity Shocks and the Business Cycle: Reconciling Recent VAR Evidence.
Joint with Beatriz de Blas P&erez (U. Navarra). Work in progress.

Employment Fluctuations with Downwards Wage Rigidity.
Joint with Marcel Jansen (U. Carlos III). Feb. 2006, revised Aug. 2006.

Stabilization versus Insurance: Welfare Effects of Procyclical Taxation under Incomplete Markets.
Joint with Michael Reiter (U. Pompeu Fabra). Nov. 2004; revised as U. Pompeu Fabra Economics Working Paper #890, Sept. 2005.

Business Cycles, Unemployment Insurance, and the Calibration of Matching Models.
Joint with Michael Reiter (U. Pompeu Fabra). CESifo Working Paper #1008, Aug. 2003; U. Pompeu Fabra Economics Working Paper #872, July 2005; revised Oct. 2006.

Computing Business Cycles with Endogenous Risk.
Joint with Michael Reiter (U. Pompeu Fabra). March 2001.

A Simple Model of Multiple Equilibria Based on Risk.
U. Pompeu Fabra Economics Working Paper #407, July 1999; revised Oct. 2000.


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