Construction and the Great Recession

The boom in real estate prices during the early 2000s and the subsequent bust were key factors underlying the recessions in the United States and Europe.Financial crises ; Recessions ; Housing - Prices

The Information Technology Revolution and the Puzzling Trends in Tobin’s average q

A growing literature argues that the Information Technology rev- olution caused the stock market crash of 1973-1974, its subsequent stagnation and eventual recovery. This paper employs general equi- librium theory to test whether this good news hypothesis is consistent with the behavior of US equity prices and with the trends in corpo- rate output, investment and consumption. I …nd it is not. A model based exclusively on good news can make equity prices fall as much as in the data but it must also imply a strong economic expansion right when the US economy stagnated. However, when the observed productivity slowdown in old production methods is incorporated into the model consistency with major macroeconomic aggregates can be achieved and a 20% drop in equity values can be accounted for. (JEL E44, O33, O41)Information Technology Revolution, Stock Market, Productivity Slowdown, Tobin's q, 1974, Crash

The Information Technology Revolution and the Puzzling Trends in Tobin’s average q

A growing literature argues that the Information Technology rev- olution caused the stock market crash of 1973-1974, its subsequent stagnation and eventual recovery. This paper employs general equi- librium theory to test whether this good news hypothesis is consistent with the behavior of US equity prices and with the trends in corpo- rate output, investment and consumption. I …nd it is not. A model based exclusively on good news can make equity prices fall as much as in the data but it must also imply a strong economic expansion right when the US economy stagnated. However, when the observed productivity slowdown in old production methods is incorporated into the model consistency with major macroeconomic aggregates can be achieved and a 20% drop in equity values can be accounted for. (JEL E44, O33, O41)Stock Market, Tobin's q Technological Change, Productivity Slowdown 1974, Information Technology Revolution

Households during the Great Recession: the financial accelerator in action?

Households are the sector that the financial accelerator appears to have hit hardest, according to the data.Households ; Recessions

Searching for the financial accelerator: how credit affects the business cycle

Firms started repaying their debts during 2008-2009, and they did so while simultaneously accumulating highly liquid assets. These two observations are puzzling if one believes firms are purportedly starving for credit but cannot obtain it.Credit ; Business cycles

Jobless recoveries or jobless growth?

Jobless recoveries since 2000 may be attributed to a slowdown in the long-term employment trend.Unemployment ; Employment ; Labor market

What happened to the U.S. stock market? accounting for the past 50 years

The extreme volatility of stock market values has been the subject of a large body of literature. Previous research focused on the short run because of a widespread belief that in the long run the market reverts to well-established fundamentals. The authors' research suggests this belief should be questioned. First, they show actual dividends cannot account for the secular trends of stock market values. They then consider a more comprehensive measure of capital income, which displays large secular fluctuations that roughly coincide with changes in stock market trends. Under perfect foresight, however, this measure fails to properly account for stock market movements. The authors thus abandon the perfect foresight assumption and instead assume that forecasts of future capital income are performed using a distributed lag equation and information available up to the forecasting period only. They find that standard asset-pricing theory can be reconciled with the secular trends in the stock market. This study, nevertheless, leaves open an important puzzle for asset-pricing theory: The market value of U.S. corporations was much lower than the replacement cost of corporate tangible assets from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.Stock market ; Asset pricing

Oil Crisis, Energy-Saving Technological Change and the Stock Market Crash of 1973-74

The market value of U.S. corporations was nearly halved following the Oil Crisis of October 1973. Real energy prices more than doubled by the end of the decade, increasing energy costs and spurring innovation in energy-saving technologies by corporations. This paper uses a neo- classical growth model to quantify the impact of the increase in energy prices on the market value of U.S. corporations. In the model, corporations adopt energy-saving technologies as a response to the energy price shock and the price of installed capital falls due to investment irreversibility. The model calibrated to match the subsequent decline in energy consumption in the U.S. generates a 25% decline in market valuation; accounting for more than half of what is observed in the data.Energy Saving Technological Change, Stock Market Collapse 1974 Tobin's q, Induced innovation

Has the recent real estate bubble biased the output gap?

We offer a word of caution to policymakers: Policies based on point estimates of the output gap may not rest on solid ground.Real estate investment

What happened to the US stock market? Accounting for the last 50 years

The extreme volatility of stock market values has been the subject of a large body of literature. Previous research focused on the short run because of a widespread belief that, in the long run, the market reverts to well understood fundamentals. Our work suggests this belief should be questioned as well. First, we show actual dividends cannot account for the secular trends of stock market values. We then consider a more comprehensive measure of capital income. This measure displays large secular fluctuations that roughly coincide with changes in stock market trends. Under perfect foresight, however, this measure fails to account for stock market movements as well. We thus abandon the perfect foresight assumption. Assuming instead that forecasts of future capital income are performed using a distributed lag equation and information available up to the forecasting period only, we find that standard asset pricing theory can be reconciled with the secular trends in the stock market. Nevertheless, our study leaves open an important puzzle for asset pricing theory: the market value of U.S. corporations was much lower than the replacement cost of corporate tangible assets from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s.Stock market ; Asset pricing