In economics, a shock is an unexpected or unpredictable event that affects an economy, either positively or negatively. Technically, it is an unpredictable change in exogenous factors—that is, factors unexplained by an economic model—which may influence endogenous economic variables.
The response of economic variables, such as GDP and employment, at the time of the shock and at subsequent times, is measured by an impulse response function.
A technology shock is the kind resulting from a technological development that affects productivity.
If the shock is due to constrained supply, it is termed a supply shock and usually results in price increases for a particular product. Supply shocks can be produced when accidents or disasters occur. The 2008 Western Australian gas crisis resulting from a pipeline explosion at Varanus Island is one example.
A demand shock is a sudden change of the pattern of private expenditure, especially of consumption spending by consumers or of investment spending by businesses.
A preference shock is a change in preferences over consumption or leisure.
An inflationary shock happens when prices of commodities increase suddenly (e.g., after a decrease of government subsidies) while not all salaries are adjusted immediately throughout society (this results in a temporary loss of purchasing power for many consumers); or that production costs begin to exceed corporate revenues (e.g. following energy price hikes).
A monetary policy shock occurs when a central bank changes, without sufficient advance warning, its pattern of interest rate or money supply control. A fiscal policy shock is an unexpected change of government spending or taxation amounts.
A news shock is a change in current expectations of future technological progress, which could be induced by new information about potential technological developments.
In the context of microeconomics, shocks are also studied at the household level, such as health, income, and consumption shocks.
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Real business-cycle theory (RBC theory) is a class of new classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle fluctuations are accounted for by real (in contrast to nominal) shocks. Unlike other leading theories of the business cycle, RBC theory sees business cycle fluctuations as the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility, and governments should therefore concentrate on long-run structural policy changes and not intervene through discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively smooth out economic short-term fluctuations.
Business cycles are intervals of expansion followed by recession in economic activity. A recession is sometimes technically defined as 2 quarters of negative GDP growth, but definitions vary; for example, in the United States, a recession is defined as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.
Milton Friedman (ˈfriːdmən; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations.
This is a doctoral level course introducing students to important topics in international finance. It also covers aspects of the recent financial crisis, such as market contagions, regulatory arbitrag
This course provides students with a working knowledge of macroeconomic models that explicitly incorporate financial markets. The goal is to develop a broad and analytical framework for analyzing the
Analyzes a macroeconomic model focusing on labor income share and the effects of productivity shocks on GDP, consumption, investment, and stock prices.
The financial crisis of 2007-2009 drew attention to the essential role of banks for the macroeconomy and to the importance of having a resilient financial sector. A vulnerability in the financial sector spills over to the real economy and can drive it into ...
EPFL2018
This paper explores the transmission of "news shocks" in a model of the housing market and shows that anticipated signals or beliefs of future macroeconomic developments can generate boom-bust cycles in the housing market and lead to business cycle fluctua ...
Dampened inflation expectations have a significant impact on the New Keynesian Phillips Curve. This dampening not only flattens the long run Phillips Curve, but it can also lead to a bias in the estimation of its short run slope. It also affects the respon ...