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Crude oil is an essential source of energy. Without access to energy, output growth is impossible. As a result of this link, volatility in oil prices has the ability to induce fluctuations in the output of both developed and developing economies. Moreover, factors such as business cycles and policy changes often introduce nonlinearity into the transmission mechanism of oil price shocks. This study therefore examines not only the interconnectedness of oil price volatility and output growth, but also the nonlinear, asymmetric impact of oil price volatility on output growth in the countries making up the Group of Seven. To this end, monthly data on West Texas Intermediate oil price and industrial production indices of the Group of Seven countries over the period 1990:01 to 2019:08 is used for empirical analysis. The study employs the DCC and cDCC-GARCH techniques for symmetric empirical analysis. The asymmetric empirical analysis is also conducted via GJR-GARCH, FIEGARCH, HYGARCH and cDCC-GARCH techniques. The findings reveal disparities in the magnitudes of the positive and negative (asymmetric) effects of oil price shocks on output growth. The results also reveal that past news and lagged volatility have a significant impact on the current conditional volatility of the output growth of the Group of Seven countries. The study concludes that the impact of oil price volatility on output growth in the selected economies is asymmetric, the volatility is highly persistent and clustered, and the asymmetric GARCH models outperform the symmetric GARCH models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-war baseball attendance data afford a unique opportunity to assess how leisure spending fared not only through deflation but also after such shocks as the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Long-run analysis via a vector error correction model (VECM) reveals significant cointegration of baseball attendance with both prices and output. A long-run positive relationship with prices offers evidence of a negative impact of deflation on leisure spending, suggesting that deflation is indeed more to be feared than inflation. There are also apparent parallels between the post-pandemic boom in leisure spending in 1919 and the post-2020 experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the return on holding valuable violins over time, particularly the macroeconomic fluctuation. We shed new light on how macroeconomic variables can affect the return on holding valuable violins. The average return on violins is higher if the violins sold during a non-recession time. Also, there are fewer transactions during recessionary times. By studying the return of different violinmakers and associated violin name, we also shed light on the effect of the violinmaker's reputation on return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political instability is often exacerbated in periods of aggregate demand shortfall. It has been conjectured that inadequate policy responses to recessions may be inimical to free economic institutions. This paper uses the Economic Freedom of the World index as its measure of economic institutions, and finds that the change in economic freedom in the following five, ten, and fifteen years is negatively impacted by an aggregate demand shortfall as measured by negative NGDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]