This thesis is concerned with three questions: first, how can the effects macroeconomic policy has on the economy in general be estimated? Second, what are the effects of a pre-announced increase in government expenditures? Third, how should monetary policy be conducted, if the policymaker faces uncertainty about the economic environment. In the first chapter I suggest to estimate the effects o...

Central questions raised by recent experience are “why do housing prices fluctuate?” and “what should central banks do about it?” For member states of a currency union, such as Spain or Texas, independent monetary policy cannot be conducted, so that it is important to inquire whether fluctuating housing prices make currency union participation undesirable. In this timely paper, Oriol Aspachs-Br...

In this study, we conducted an oil prices forecasting competition among a set of structural models, including vector autoregression and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Our results highlight two principles. First, forecasts should exploit the fact that real are mean reverting over long horizons. Second, models not replicate high volatility observed in samples. By following ...

Social capital plays a role in many desirable economic outcomes. We analyze how these beneficial effects translate into the performance of economies by developing dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model featuring social explaining Solow residual. then simulate and estimate with Bayesian techniques using Italian data. Our framework fits actual data better than standard DSGE model, su...