A real explanation for heterogeneous investment dynamics

Household investment, that is investment in consumer durables and housing, leads non-residential fixed investment over the U.S. business cycle. This observation represents a potent challenge to real business cycle (RBC) theory. First of all the theory has been unable to account for it. In addition, research suggests the observation is driven by monetary shocks, supporting the view that these shocks play a leading role in the U.S. business cycle. This paper shows that RBC theory is consistent with the investment dynamics after all. It does so by generalizing the standard home production environment to take into account the fact that household capital is useful in market production.Monetary theory ; Business cycles

The new view of growth and business cycles

Evidence on the cost of business equipment investment supports a new way of understanding growth and business cycles. The equipment price has been falling for most of the last 40 years and it tends to fall more the faster economy is growing. This suggests that technological change embodied in new capital equipment has a substantial effect on growth and business cycles.Business cycles

Evaluating the Calvo Model of Sticky Prices

Can variants of the classic Calvo (1983) model of sticky prices account for the statistical behavior of post-war US inflation? We develop and test versions of the model for which the answer to this question is yes. We then investigate whether these models imply plausible degrees of inertia in price setting behavior by firms. We find that they do, but only if we depart from two auxiliary assumptions made in standard expositions of the Calvo model. These assumptions are that monopolistically competitive firms face a constant elasticity of demand and capital can be instantaneously reallocated after a shock. When we modify these assumptions our model is consistent with the view that firms re-optimize prices

(S, s) inventory policies in general equilibrium

We study the aggregate implications of (S,s) inventory policies in a dynamic general equilibrium model with aggregate uncertainty. Firms in the model's retail sector face idiosyncratic demand risk, and (S,s) inventory policies are optimal because of fixed order costs. The distribution of inventory holdings affects the aggregate outcome in two ways: variation in the decision to order and variation in the rate of sale through the pricing decisions of retailers. We find that both mechanisms must operate to reconcile observations that orders are more volatile than, and inventory investment is positively correlated with, sales, while remaining consistent with other salient business cycle characteristics. The model exhibits strong amplifications for some shocks, and persistence to a limited extent.Business cycles ; Inventories

How does an increase in government purchases affect economy?

This article studies the impact on aggregate economic activity of increases in defense purchases which are unrelated to other developments in the economy. The authors use empirical evidence to evaluate the predictions of several prominent models.Economic development ; Macroeconomics ; Labor market ; Expenditures, Public ; Defense industries

Evaluating the Calvo model of sticky prices

This paper studies the empirical performance of a widely used model of nominal rigidities: the Calvo model of sticky goods prices. We describe an extended version of this model with variable elasticity of demand of the differentiated goods and imperfect capital mobility. We find little evidence against standard versions of the model without the extensions, but the estimated frequency of price adjustment is implausible. With the extended model the estimates are more reasonable. This is especially so if the sample is split to take into account a possible change in monetary regime around 1980.Prices

Testing the Calvo model of sticky prices

This article discusses the empirical performance of a widely used model of nominal rigidities: the Calvo model of sticky good prices. The authors argue that there is overwhelming evidence against this model. But this evidence is generated under three key assumptions: one, there is no lag between the time firms reoptimize their price plans and the time they implement those plans; two, there is no measurement error in inflation; and three, monetary policy is the same in the pre-1979 and post-1982 periods. The authors discuss the impact of relaxing each of these assumptions.Prices ; Macroeconomics

The role of real wages, productivity and fiscal policy in Germany's Great Depression 1928-1937

We study the behavior of output, employment, consumption, and investment in Germany during the Great Depression of 1928-37. In this time period, real wages were countercyclical, and productivity and fiscal policy were procyclical. We use the neoclassical growth model to investigate how much these factors contribute to the Depression. We find that real wages, which were significantly above their market clearing levels, were the most important factor for the economic decline in the Depression. Changes in productivity and fiscal policy were also important for the decline and recovery. Even though our analysis is limited to a small number of factors, the model accounts surprisingly well for the Depression in Germany.Fiscal policy ; Productivity ; Wages ; Germany

Idiosyncratic risk and aggregate employment dynamics

This paper studies how producers’ idiosyncratic risks affect an industry’s aggregate dynamics in an environment where certainty equivalence fails. In the model, producers can place workers in two types of jobs, organized and temporary. Workers are less productive in temporary jobs, but creating an organized job requires an irreversible investment of managerial resources. Increasing productivity risk raises the value of an unexercised option to create an organized job. Losing this option is one cost of immediate organized job creation, so an increase in its value induces substitution towards cheaper temporary jobs. Because they are costless to create and destroy, a producer using temporary jobs can be more flexible, responding more to both idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. If all of an industry’s producers adapt to heightened idiosyncratic risk in this way, the industry as a whole can respond more to a given aggregate shock. This insight is used to better understand the observation from the U.S. manufacturing sector that groups of plants displaying high idiosyncratic variability also have large aggregate fluctuations.Employment (Economic theory) ; Temporary employees

Understanding aggregate job flows

The authors describe how evidence on aggregate job flows challenges standard business cycle theory and discuss recent developments in business cycle theory aimed at accounting for the evidence.Business cycles ; Employment (Economic theory) ; Labor market