Advertising and Business Cycle Fluctuations

Abstract

This paper provides new empirical evidence for quarterly U.S. aggregate advertisingexpenditures, showing that advertising has a well defined pattern over the BusinessCycle. To understand this pattern we develop a general equilibrium model wheretargeted advertising increases the marginal utility of the advertised good. Advertisingintensity is endogenously determined by profit maximizing firms. We embed thisassumption into an otherwise standard model of the business cycle withmonopolistic competition. We find that advertising affects the aggregate dynamics ina relevant way, and it exacerbates the welfare costs of fluctuations for the consumer.Finally, we provide estimates of our setup using Bayesian techniques.Advertising, DSGE model, Business Cycle fluctuations, Bayesian