International Business Cycle Accounting

In this paper, I extend the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2007) to a two-country international business cycle model and quantify the effect of the disturbances in relevant markets on the business cycle correlation between Japan and the US over the 1980-2008 period. I find that disturbances in the labor market and production efficiency are important in accounting for the recent increase in the cross-country output correlation. Financial globalization can be the cause of the recent increase in cross-country output correlation if it operated through an increase in the cross-country correlation of disturbances in the labor market and production efficiency, not in the domestic or international capital markets

A Neoclassical Analysis of the Postwar Japanese Economy

Two key features of the postwar Japanese economy are the delay of catch up during the 50s followed by rapid economic growth during the 60s and early 70s and the consistent decline in labor supply during the rapid growth period. A standard neoclassical growth model can quantitatively account for the Japanese postwar growth patterns of capital, output, consumption and investment taking the destruction of capital stock during the war and postwar TFP growth as given. The decline in labor can be explained by strong income effects caused by subsistence consumption during the rapidly growing period.E13, O40

Accounting for Japanese Business Cycles: a Quest for Labor Wedges

A key feature of the Japanese business cycles over the 1980- 2007 period is that the fluctuation of total hours worked leads the fluctuation of output. A canonical real business cycle model cannot account for this fact. This paper uses the business cycle accounting method introduced by Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2007) and shows that labor market distortions are important in accounting for the this feature of the Japanese labor supply fluctuation. I further discuss fundamental economic shocks that manifest themselves as labor wedges and assess their impacts on labor fluctuation.Business Cycle Accounting, Japanese Labor Market

Large Deviations of Generalized Method of Moments and Empirical Likelihood Estimators

This paper studies large deviation properties of the generalized method of moments and generalized empirical likelihood estimators for moment restriction models. We consider two cases for the data generating probability measure: the model assumption and local deviations from the model assumption. For both cases, we derive conditions where these estimators have exponentially small error probabilities for point estimation.Generalized method of moments, Empirical likelihood, Large deviations

A Neoclassical Analysis of the Asian Crisis: Business Cycle Accounting of a Small Open Economy

This paper applies the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2007) to a standard neoclassical small open economy model and assesses the recent crises in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Thailand. The key common features of these crises are the sudden output collapses and consumption drops as large as the output drops. Quantitative results show that the sudden drops in total factor productivity are important in explaining the output drops. Distortions in the foreign debt market are important in Korea and Thailand whereas distortions in the domestic capital market are important in Hong Kong and Singapore in explaining the large consumption drops.Business Cycle Accounting, Small Open Economy, Asian Crisis

The Credit Spread and U.S. Business Cycles

In this paper, we construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in order to investigate the impact of credit spread shocks on the U.S. business cycle. We find that the shocks to the investment specific technology and the preference weights on consumption and leisure are the main sources of output fluctuation. Shocks to the credit spread and productivity are the main source of the fluctuation in the investment to output ratio. Credit spread shocks also had a significant impact on the output during the recent financial crisis

Efficiency, Distortions and Factor Utilization during the Interwar Period

In this paper, we analyze the International Great Depression in the US and Western Europe using the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (CKM 2007). We extend the business cycle accounting model by incorporating endogenous factor utilization which turns out to be an important transmission mechanism of the disturbances in the economy. Our main findings are that in the US labor wedges account for roughly half of the drop in output while efficiency and investment wedges each account for a quarter of it during the 1929-1933 period while in Western Europe labor wedges account for more than one-third of the output drop and efficiency, government and investment wedges are responsible for the remaining during the 1929-1932 period. Our findings are consistent with several strands of existing descriptive and empirical literature on the International Great Depression

A Comparative Estimation of Financial Frictions in Japan and Korea

We apply the Business Cycle Accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2007) to the Japanese and the Korean economy and quantitatively analyze the effects of financial frictions during the recent recessions. First, we compute exogenous distor- tions in the financial, government purchases, labor, and production markets. The preliminary results show that the sudden drop in production efficiency (TFP) was the main reason of the Korean recession while the increase in labor market distortions was the main reason of the Japanese slump. Next, we orthogonalize the innovations to the distortions and quantify the maximum spill-over effects of financial frictions on output fluctuations in both countries following Christiano and Davis (2006). Our results imply that financial frictions may have been important in explaining the recessions in both countries through their effects on TFP and labor market distortions

On Bartlett Correctability of Empirical Likelihood in Generalized Power Divergence Family

Baggerly (1998) showed that empirical likelihood is the only member in the Cressie-Read power divergence family to be Bartlett correctable. This paper strengthens Baggerly's result by showing that in a generalized class of the power divergence family, which includes the Cressie-Read family and other nonparametric likelihood such as Schennach's (2005, 2007) exponentially tilted empirical likelihood, empirical likelihood is still the only member to be Bartlett correctable. Bartlett correction, Empirical likelihood, Cressie-Read power divergence family

Testing for Equilibrium Multiplicity in Dynamic Markov Games

This paper proposes several statistical tests for finite state Markov games to examine the null hypothesis that the data are generated from a single equilibrium. We formulate tests of (i) the conditional choice probabilities, (ii) the steady-state distribution of states and (iii) the conditional distribution of states conditional on an initial state. In a Monte Carlo study we find that the chi-squared test of the steady-state distribution performs well and has high power even with a small number of markets and time periods. We apply the chi-squared test to the empirical application of Ryan (2012) that analyzes dynamics of the U.S. Portland Cement industry and test if his assumption of single equilibrium is supported by the data