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The authors identify the fundamentals behind the dynamics of the U.S. stock market over the past 30 years. They specify a structural vector-error-correction model following the methodology of King, Plosser, Stock, and Watson (1991).

The authors estimate and solve a small structural model for the euro area over the 1983–2000 period. Given the assumption of rational expectations, the model implies a set of orthogonality conditions that provide the basis for estimating the model's parameter by generalized method of moments.

It has been well documented that the education premium measured by the wage difference between university and high school graduates has remained constant over the past two decades in Canada. Despite this stable pattern at the aggregate level, skill-biased technology could have important implications for the inter-industry wage structure.

The authors apply existing inflation models that have worked well in industrialized countries to Mexico, an emerging market that has recently moved to adopt an inflation-targeting framework for monetary policy. They compare the performance of these models with a mark-up model that has been used extensively to analyze inflation in Mexico.

The author explores the role that Taylor-type rules can play in monetary policy, given the degree of uncertainty in the economy. The optimal rule is derived from a simple infinite-horizon model of the monetary transmission mechanism, with only additive uncertainty.

The author describes the rapid development of the syndicated corporate loan market in the 1990s. He explores the historical forces that led to the development of the contemporary U.S. syndicated loan market, which is effectively a hybrid of the investment banking and commercial banking worlds.

The authors develop an index of financial stress for the Canadian financial system. Stress is defined as the force exerted on economic agents by uncertainty and changing expectations of loss in financial markets and institutions.

Traditional structural models cannot distinguish whether changes in activity are a function of altered expectations today or lagged responses to past plans. Polynomial-adjustment-cost (PAC) models remove this ambiguity by explicitly separating observed dynamic behaviour into movements that have been induced by changes in expectations, and responses to expectations, that have been delayed because of adjustment costs.

The authors study the macroeconomic consequences of large military buildups using a New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) approach that combines nominal rigidities within imperfectly competitive goods and labour markets. They show that the predictions of the NNS framework generally are consistent with the sign, timing, and magnitude of how hours worked, after-tax real wages, and output actually respond to an upsurge in military purchases.

The author examines the role of collateral in an environment where lenders and borrowers possess identical information and similar beliefs about its future value. Using option-pricing techniques, he shows that a secured loan contract is equivalent to a regular bond and an embedded option to the borrower to default.