Inspired by standard risk neutral measures of volatility, this paper identifies two types of volatility shocks, namely quantity and price of risk shocks, which can intuitively be interpreted as uncertainty and risk aversion shocks, respectively. Identification is achieved in a shock-restricted...

Cho, Cooley, and Kim (RED, 2015) (CCK) consider the welfare effects of removing multiplicative productivity shocks from real business cycle models. In a model that admits an analytical solution they argue convincingly that the positive welfare effect of removing uncertainty can be dominated by a...

I study the welfare cost of business cycles in a complete-markets economy where some people are more risk averse than others. Relatively more risk-averse people buy insurance against aggregate risk, and relatively less risk-averse people sell insurance. These trades reduce the welfare cost of...

We consider a frictional labor market in which firms want to insure their senior employees against income fluctuations and, at the same time, want to recruit new employees to fill their vacant positions. Firms can commit to a wage schedule, i.e. a schedule that specifies the wage paid by the...

This paper analyses the conduct of monetary policy in an environment in which cyclical swings in risk appetite affect households' propensity to save. It uses a New Keynesian model featuring external habit formation to show that taking note of precautionary saving motives justifies an...

A challenge for quantity-theoretic explanations of business cycles is that recessions manifest despite central banks' scrupulousness to avoid falls in monetary aggregates, a fact which would seem to indicate a structural explanation. This paper argues that a broader and theoretically richer...

I construct a tractable model to evaluate the liquidity shock hypothesis that exogenous shocks to equity market liquidity are an important cause of the business cycle. After calibrating the model, I find that a large and persistent negative liquidity shock can generate large drops in investment,...

This paper considers the business cycle, asset pricing, and welfare effects of increased risk aversion, while holding intertemporal substitution preferences constant. I show that increasing risk aversion does not significantly affect the relative variabilities and co-movements of aggregate...

The author develops a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking sector, a financial accelerator, and financial frictions in the interbank and bank capital markets. He investigates the importance of banking sector frictions on business cycle fluctuations and assesses the...