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What do firms learn from their interactions in markets, and what are the implications for aggregate dynamics? We address this question in a multi-sector real-business cycle model with a sparse input-output structure. In each sector, firms observe their own productivity, along with the prices of their inputs and the price of their output. We show that general equilibrium market-clearing conditions place heavy constraints on average expectations, and characterize a set of cases where average expectations (and average dynamics) are exactly those of the full-information model. This "aggregate irrelevance" of information can occur even when sectoral expectations and dynamics are quite different under partial information, and despite the fact that each sector represents a non-negligible portion of the overall economy. In numerical examples, we show that even when the conditions for aggregate irrelevance of information are not met, aggregate dynamics remain nearly identical to the full-information model under reasonable calibrations.

I investigate the aggregate consequences of canonical financial frictions in the supply of credit to firms: private information and limited enforcement. I propose a general equilibrium model in which entrepreneurs finance their firm through a long-term contract with a financial intermediary. The contract is inefficient because firm cash flow is costly to monitor, and borrowers that repudiate cannot be excluded from capital markets. By investing in enforcement capacity, an intermediary can delay debt repayment and maintain incentive compatibility. Reforms that seek to decrease either the cost of monitoring or enforcing contracts, or both, affect firm dynamics and can generate complementaries. Estimating the model with data on Colombian manufacturing firms in the 1980s and 1990s, I find that financial frictions are responsible for a significant aggregate output loss. Most of this distortion can be attributed to private information. Reforms that only reduce private information create significant economic growth and welfare gains, while those that only improve enforcement do not. There are significant complementarities between different types of reforms, as moral hazard is less significant when contracts are more enforceable.

Recent empirical evidence suggests that product creation is procyclical and it occurs largely within existing firms. Motivated by these findings, the current paper investigates the role of intra-firm product scope choice in a general equilibrium economy with oligopolistic producers. It shows that the multi-product nature of firms makes the economy susceptible to sunspot equilibria. The model is estimated via Bayesian methods. Artificial business cycles closely resemble empirically observed fluctuations with sunspots explaining a significant portion of U.S. business cycles.

This paper analyzes the implications of distortionary taxation and debt financing for optimal government spending policy in a sticky-price economy where the nominal interest rate is subject to the zero lower bound constraint. Regardless of the type of tax available and the initial debt level, optimal government spending policy in a recession is characterized by an initial increase followed by a reduction below, and an eventual return to, the steady state. The magnitude of variations in the government spending as well as their welfare implications depend importantly on the available tax instrument and the initial debt level.

We study the dynamic general equilibrium of an economy where risk averse shareholders delegate the management of the firm to risk averse managers. The optimal contract has two main components: an incentive component corresponding to a non-tradable equity position and a variable “salary” component indexed to the aggregate wage bill and to aggregate dividends. Tying a manager's compensation to the performance of her own firm ensures that her interests are aligned with the goals of firm owners and that maximizing the discounted sum of future dividends will be her objective. Linking managers' compensation to overall economic performance is also required to make sure that managers use the appropriate stochastic discount factor to value those future dividends. General equilibrium considerations thus provide a potential resolution of the “pay for luck” puzzle. We also demonstrate that one sided “relative performance evaluation” follows equally naturally when managers and shareholders are differentially risk averse.

Do fluctuations of the labor wedge, defined as the gap between the firm's marginal product of labor (MPN) and the household's marginal rate of substitution (MRS), reflect fluctuations of the gap between the MPN and the real wage or fluctuations of the gap between the real wage and the MRS? For many countries and most forcefully for the United States, fluctuations of the labor wedge predominantly reflect fluctuations of the gap between the real wage and the MRS. As a result, business cycle theories of the labor wedge should primarily focus on improving the household side of the labor market. Explanations of the labor wedge based on departures of the representative firm's MPN from the real wage are rejected by the data because the labor share of income is not strongly procyclical.

The financial crises or “sudden stops” of the last decade in emerging economies were accompanied by a large fall in total factor productivity. In this paper we explore the role of financial frictions in exacerbating the misallocation of resources and explaining this drop in TFP. We build a dynamic two-sector model of a small open economy with a cash in advance constraint where firms have to finance a part of their purchase of intermediate goods prior to production. The model is calibrated to the Mexican economy before the 1995 crisis and subject to an unexpected shock to interest rates. The financial friction can generate an endogenous fall in TFP of about 3.5 percent and can explain 74 percent of the observed fall in GDP per worker. Adding a cost of adjusting labor between the two sectors and sectoral specificity of capital also generates the sectoral patterns of output and resource use observed in the data after the sudden stop. The results highlight the interaction between interest rates and allocative inefficiencies as an explanation of the real effects of the financial crisis.

How should environmental policy respond to economic fluctuations caused by persistent productivity shocks? This paper answers that question using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium real business cycle model that includes a pollution externality. I first estimate the relationship between the cyclical components of carbon dioxide emissions and US GDP and find it to be inelastic. Using this result to calibrate the model, I find that optimal policy allows carbon emissions to be procyclical: increasing during expansions and decreasing during recessions. However, optimal policy dampens the procyclicality of emissions compared to the unregulated case. A price effect from costlier abatement during booms outweighs an income effect of greater demand for clean air. I also model a decentralized economy, where government chooses an emissions tax or quantity restriction and firms and consumers respond. The optimal emissions tax rate and the optimal emissions quota are both procyclical: during recessions, the tax rate and the emissions quota both decrease.

This paper investigates the quantitative importance of various types of frictions for inflation and nominal interest rate dynamics by extending business cycle accounting to monetary models. Representing a variety of real and nominal frictions as `wedges' to standard equilibrium conditions allows a quantitative assessment of those frictions. Decomposing the data into movements due to these wedges shows that frictions that are equivalent to wedges in TFP and equilibrium conditions for asset markets are essential. In contrast, wedges in equilibrium conditions for capital accumulation and the resource constraint, and wedges capturing distortionary effects of sticky prices, play only a secondary role.

This paper shows that introducing weak property rights in the standard real business cycle (RBC) model can help to explain economic fluctuations. This is motivated by the empirical observation that changes in institutions in emerging markets are related to the evolution of the main macroeconomic variables. In particular, in Mexico, the movements in productivity in the data are associated with changes in institutions, so that we can explain productivity shocks to a large extent as shocks to the quality of institutions. We find that the model with shocks to the degree of protection of property rights only - without technology shocks - can match the second moments in the data for Mexico well. In particular, the fit is better than that of the standard neoclassical model with full protection of property rights regarding the auto-correlations and cross-correlations in the data, especially those related to labor. Viewing productivity shocks as shocks to institutions is also consistent with the stylized fact of falling productivity and non-decreasing labor hours in Mexico over 1980-1994, which is a feature that the neoclassical model cannot match.

This paper reexamines the question of how to explain business cycle co-movements within and between countries. First, we present two simple theoretically flexible price models to illustrate how and why news shocks can generate robust positive co-movements in economic activity across countries. We also discuss under what conditions the multi-sector version of the model generates appropriate business cycle patterns within countries. Second, we develop a quantitative two-country multi-sector model that is capable of replicating many international business cycle facts. The model is a two-country extension of the closed economy model of Beaudry and Portier [2004], in which there are limited possibilities to reallocate factors between investment and consumption good sectors.

In a sticky-price model with labor market search and habit persistence, Walsh (2005) shows that inertia in the interest rate policy helps to reconcile the inflation and output persistence with empirical observations for the US economy. We show that this finding is sensitive with regard to the introduction of capital formation. While we are able to replicate the findings for the inflation inertia in a model with capital adjustment costs and variable capacity utilization, the output response to an interest shock is found to be too large and no longer hump-shaped in this case. In addition we find that the response of output to a technology shock can only be reconciled with empirical findings if either the adjustment of the utilization rate is very costly or there is only a modest amount of nominal rigidity in the economy.

A central challenge to monetary business cycle theory is to find a solution to the problem of persistence in the real effect of monetary shocks. Previous research has identified separately specific factors and intermediate inputs as two promising mechanisms for generating the persistence in a staggered price-setting framework. By examining a staggered price model that features both specific factors and intermediate inputs, this paper finds an offsetting interaction between the two individually promising mechanisms, which leads to a cancelation of much of the impact of each in propagating monetary shocks. This finding posits a challenge to the search of robust monetary transmission mechanism for solving the persistence problem. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper examines the role of the monetary instrument choice for local equilibrium determinacy under sticky prices and different fiscal policy regimes. Corresponding to Benhabib et al.'s results for interest rate feedback rules [Benhabib, J., Schmitt-Grohe, S., Uribe, M., 2001. Monetary policy and multiple equilibria. American Economic Review 91, 167-185], the money growth rate should not rise by more than one for one with inflation when the primary surplus is raised with public debt. Under an exogenous primary surplus, money supply should be accommodating - such that real balances grow with inflation - to ensure local equilibrium determinacy. When the central bank links the supply of money to government bonds by controlling the bond-to-money ratio, an inflation stabilizing policy can be implemented for both fiscal policy regimes. Local determinacy is then ensured when the bond-to-money ratio is not extremely sensitive to inflation, or when interest payments on public debt are entirely tax financed, i.e., the budget is balanced.

We study how an occasionally binding capacity constraint affects the properties of business cycles. A real business cycle model is constructed where production takes place at individual plants and the number of plants operated varies over the cycle. The capacity constraint binds in states where all plants are operated. We derive the aggregate production function for this economy, which turns out to differ from the standard Cobb.Douglas function while retaining its desirable properties. The business cycle features of this one-sector growth model are similar to those of a standard real business cycle model in most respects. Our model does, however, display some properties of actual economies that standard models do not. In particular, business cycles in our model are asymmetric--troughs are deeper on average than peaks are tall. Also, labor's share of income is counter-cyclical, as it is in US data. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper construct a two-sector model of two-period lived overlapping generations with endogenous occupational choice where ability-heterogeneous agents choose whether to become educated when young. We show that the steady-state equilibrium can be locally indeterminate even under linear preferences and constant-returns Cobb-Douglas production technologies, regardless of the factor-intensity rankings. Thus, endogenous occupational choice can result in dynamic indeterminacy without complicate preferences/technologies and without requiring the consumption-good production $more capital-intensive. (Copyright: Elsevier)

In a standard overlapping generations model, active monetary policy reinforces mechanisms that lead to equilibrium indeterminacy and to countercyclical behavior of young-age consumption. The policy rule which minimizes inflation volatility can be active or passive, depending on the characteristics of shocks and the risk aversion of households. Inflation forecast errors are always greater under active inflation forecast targeting than under passive inflation forecast targeting or strict money growth targeting. Indeterminacy is more likely under an active forwardlooking rule than under the corresponding backward-looking rule, but backward-looking rules can render the monetary steady state unstable. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Is there a trade-off between fluctuations and growth? The empirical evidence is mixed, with some studies finding a positive relationship, while others find a negative one. Our objectives are to understand how fundamental uncertainty affects the long run growth rate and to identify important factors determining this relationship in a convex endogenous growth model. Qualitatively, we show that the relationship between volatility in fundamentals (or policies) and mean growth can be either positive or negative. The curvature of the utility function is a key parameter that determines the sign of the relationship. Quantitatively, an increase in uncertainty always increases the growth rate in our calibrated models. Though the changes we find are nontrivial, they are not large enough by themselves to account for the large differences in growth rates observed in the data. We also find that differences in the curvature of preferences have very substantial effects on the estimated variability of stationary objects like the consumption-output ratio and hours worked. For this reason, we expect that the models considered in this paper will provide the basis of sharp estimates of the curvature parameter. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Using ideas from the endogenous growth literature, we present a model of the endogenous determination of productivity growth based on individual worker decisions about human capital investment. We calibrate a version of the model to match long run growth facts from the US and study the business cycle properties of this model. This approach offers improvements along several dimensions over standard exogenous growth methodologies. Most importantly, our stochastic endogenous growth model generates much greater serial correlation in output growth and labor supply volatility relative to its real business cycle counterpart. We conclude that using the extra discipline of reproducing the trend productivity growth features of the data endogenously constitutes an important missing component from the real business cycle approach. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper studies the dynamic properties of a standard cash-in-advance model modified to include habit persistence over preferences. The central bank is assumed to follow an exogenous money growth rule. We show that equilibrium real indeterminacy is more likely to occur when habit persistence is high enough. We then establish that, in contrast to the standard CIA model, the implied sunspot dynamics may be non-oscillatory. This result is robust against alternative specifications provided the rigid CIA assumption is maintained. (Copyright: Elsevier)

We extend the basic RBC model to allow for biased technical changes. One broad definition of biased technical changes is changes that directly affect factor elasticities. Given the link between changes in factor elasticities and factor shares, observed fluctuations in US labor's share are motivation for this study. We find that when the technology shock process is calibrated according to US labor's share dynamics, 93 percent of US GDP volatility is accounted for. The observed countercyclical nature of labor's share is accounted for, although the model correlation is too high. As well, the model exhibits business cycles that are qualitatively similar to those of the standard model with neutral technology shocks. These findings, while robust to the short-run properties of various measures of labor's share, are sensitive to the average labor's share used in calibration, e.g. departing from a baseline calibration value of 63 percent, for steady-state labor's shares of 50 percent and 70 percent the model accounts for 107 percent and 84 percent of US GDP volatility respectively. (Copyright: Elsevier)

We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative relationship between real interest rates and output fluctuations in the Brazilian economy from 1980 to 2001. When firms are subject to working capital restrictions, the model is consistent with both the cyclical volatilities of national income components and the countercyclical character of real interest rates. Simulations indicate that output fluctuations are quite sensitive to the persistence of interest rate oscillations. Non-structural econometric estimations of the dynamic IS curve are, therefore, susceptible to the Lucas' critique, and may misguide the Central Bank's policymaking. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper uses a tractable macroeconomic model with idiosyncratic human capital risk and incomplete markets to analyze the growth and welfare effects of business cycles. The analysis is based on the assumption that the elimination of business cycles eliminates the variation in idiosyncratic risk. The paper shows that a reduction in the variation in idiosyncratic risk decreases the ratio of physical to human capital and increases the total investment return and welfare. If the degree of risk aversion is less than or equal to one, then economic growth is enhanced. This paper also provides a quantitative assessment of the macroeconomic effects of business cycles based on a calibrated version of the model. Even for relatively small degrees of risk aversion (around one) the model implies that the elimination of business cycles has substantial effects on investment in physical and human capital, economic growth, and welfare. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Using data on US manufacturing, I estimate internal returns to scale and external effects for the consumption and investment sectors. I construct panels of data at the industry level and use results of gross output production function estimation to derive implied estimates in a value added specification. For the investment sector, returns to scale appear to be slightly increasing, with evidence of a positive external effect. For consumption, the evidence indicates decreasing to constant returns to scale. I discuss the implications of these results for the empirical plausibility of indeterminacy in recent multi-sector models of the business cycle. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper develops a dynamic general-equilibrium model of capital adjustments under monopolistic competition. Investments are partially irreversible. The model includes microfoundations for consumption decisions and capital-adjustment strategies. The effects of the model parameters on the optimal capital-adjustment strategy are determined analytically. A major result is that the aggregate net investment is proportional to the difference between the desired and previous aggregate capital. The speed of adjustment decreases with the cost of reversibility, is invariant to the shares of labor and capital, and increases with the level of macroeconomic uncertainty. However, the latter effect is not quantitatively important. (Copyright: Elsevier)

We set up a dynamic model of firm investment in which liquidity constraints enter explicity into the firm's maximization problem. The optimal policy rules are incorporated into a maximum likelihood procedure which estimates the structural parameters of the model. Investment is positively related to the firm's internal financial position when the firm is relatively poor. This relationship disappears for wealthy firms, which can reach their desired level of investment. Borrowing is an increasing function of financial position for poor firms. This relationship is reversed as a firm's financial position improves, and large firms hold little debt. Liquidity constrained firms may be unused credits lines and the capacity to invest further if they desire. However the fear that liquidity constraints will become binding in the future induces them to invest only when internal resources increase. We estimate the structural parameters of the model and use them to quantify the importance of liquidity constraints on firms' investment. We find that liquidity constraints matter significantly for the investment decisions of firms. If firms can finance investment by issuing fresh equity, rather than with internal funds or debt, average capital stock is almost 35% higher over a period of 20 years. Transitory shocks to internal funds have a sustained effect on the capital stock. This effect lasts for several periods and is more persistent for small firms than for large firms. A 10% negative shock to firm fundamentals reduces the capital stock of firms which face liquidity constraints by almost 8% over a period as opposed to only 3.5% for firms which do not face these constraints.

We argue that more workers choose to switch occupations in booms than in recessions. That is, skill retooling is procyclical. This view is consistent with Lucas and Prescotts (1974) equilibrium search model modified with aggregate shocks and unemployment insurance. Empirical support is found in a unique Canadian administrative data set that measures the annual flow of workers (from 1979-1993) who separate from their jobs to 'return to school'. This flow is strongly procyclical. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Chari, Kehoe, and McGratten's (1998) finding that a standard monetary business cycle model with staggered price setting is unable to generate sufficiently persistent real effects of monetary shocks has engendered a growing literature aimed at developing alternative mechanisms for producing greater persistence. The most popular approach at present in this literature appears to be one in which staggered wage contracts are used as either an alternative or a complement to a staggered price mechanism. This is informed by recent research by Andersen (1998) and Huang and Liu (1998) which finds that the staggered wage model, despite its superficial similarity to the staggered price setup, incorporates a very different microstructure that implies substantially more real persistence. This paper argues that these authors' findings rely heavily on the assumption that identical inputs are used by all firms, and demonstrates that, by assuming firm-specific factor inputs the staggered price model is as capable as the staggered wage model of generating persistent real responses to monetary shocks. (Copyright: Elsevier)

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 was 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. (Copyright: Elsevier)

The papers in this volume study nine depressions - both from the interwar period in Europe and America and from more recent times and Latin America - using a common framework. All of the papers rely on growth accounting to decompose changes in output into the portions due to changes in factor inputs and the portion due to the in efficiency with which these factors are used. All of the papers employ simple applied dynamic general equilibrium models. Collectively, these papers indicate that government policies that affect productivity and hours per working-age person are the crucial determinants of the great depressions of the twentieth century. (Copyright: Elsevier)

The standard real business cycle literature mainly focuses on Walrasian models designed to fit the U.S. institutional framework. Differences between the United States and Europe, mostly evident in the labor market, suggest that a purely Walrasian model may be inappropriate for the study of European business cycles. I present a stochastic version of the dynamic general equilibrium model of Daveri and Maffezzoli (2000, “A Numerical Approach to Fiscal Policy, Unemployment and Growth in Europe,” Econometrics and Applied Economics Working Paper 2000-4, IEP, Universita Bocconi), where unemployment is generated by monopolistic unions, and calibrate it to reproduce several long-run features of the Italian and U.S. economies. This framework is then compared with an indivisible labor model built on Hansen (1985, Journal of Monetary Economics16, 309–328) and Rogerson and Wright (1988, Journal of Monetary Economics22, 501–515). I focus on the impulse response functions, the standard business cycle statistics, and the ability to reproduce the cyclical components of the main macroeconomic variables. The main results are as follows: (i) the impulse response functions of the monopoly union (MU) model show a higher degree of overall persistence; (ii) the business cycle statistics are similar; (iii) the MU model enjoys a statistically significant advantage in reproducing the Italian business cycle, but not that of the United States. Journal of Economics Literature Classification Numbers: E32, E24, J23, J51.

Individuals routinely devote time to skill acquisition by pursuing activities such as formal schooling, formal employer-provided training, and informal on-the-job training. Here, we use a business-cycle model to analyze the general-equilibrium implications of a representative agent's decision to devote time to skill acquisition; we also use the model to make inferences regarding the behavior of aggregate skill-acquisition activities. Under the model, investment of time in the acquisition of skills increases the stock of human capital available for use in production activities in the following period. In parallel, purchases of the physical investment good increase the stock of physical capital available for use in production activities in the following period. We use aggregate data on consumption, investment and labor hours to formally estimate the parameters of the model, and then use the estimated model and the observed data to infer the aggregate behavior of skill-acquisi tion activities. We find that these activities have important cyclical implications, and follow a distinct countercyclical pattern.

The uncertain and sequential trading (UST) model of inventories behavior with iid shocks predicts that (a) the beginning of period inventories is a sufficient statistic for past variables and (b) an increase in the beginning of period inventories reduces output, employment, hours per employee, and effort. I find empirical support for the second hypothesis but not for the first. The rejection of the first hypothesis is rather informative and points in the direction of adjustment costs and/or serially correlated shocks. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E220, E320.

This paper uses the Triples test of Randles et al. (1980, Journal of the American Statistical Association , 75 , 168–172) to detect asymmetries in U.S. as well as international GDP fluctuations. The test does not detect any asymmetry in the distribution of the U.S. GDP, which is consistent with previous empirical findings. However, significant asymmetries are found in international data. Detection of asymmetries is a first step toward model-selection process such that stylized facts can be replicated. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E3, E32, C14.

We show that in a two-sector real business cycle model with sufficiently strong investment externalities, a regressive tax policy can stabilize the economy against fluctuations driven by agents' animal spirits. By contrast, this economy with a flat or progressive tax scheme (such as that in the U.S.) is more susceptible to indeterminacy and sunspot fluctuations. In the model with an aggregate constant returns-to-scale technology or a low investment externality, we show that a regressive tax policy can destabilize the economy by causing belief-driven fluctuations. Moreover, depending on the size of investment externalities and the slope parameter of the tax schedule, the economy exhibits various types of endogenous fluctuations, including Hopf or saddle-node bifurcations and stochastic sunspot equilibria. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E32, E62, 041.

We study the effects of German unification in a model with capital accumulation, skill differences, and a welfare state. We argue that this event is similar to a mass migration of low-skilled agents holding no capital into a foreign country. Absent a welfare state, we observe an investment boom, depressed output, and employment conditions. Capital owners and high-skilled agents are willing to give up to 4% of per-capita consumption to favor unification. When a welfare state exists the investment boom disappears and the recession is prolonged. Now, with unification, capital owners and high-skilled agents lose 4% of per-capita consumption. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E32, E62, F22, H23.

Standard international real business cycle models are generally unable to replicate the observed comovements of all the main aggregate variables: in particular, they generate low or negative international comovements in output, investment, and labour. I simulated a two-country, two-sector stochastic endogenous growth model that embodies an externality linking human capital across countries. This model is able to reproduce positive international correlations for all the main variables and is partially able to reproduce their ranking. These results are robust to changes in the entire set of parameters, as shown in a global sensitivity analysis performed by applying Canova's methodology. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E32, F21, J24, O41.

When large, discrete technological improvements require the accumulation of research or infrastructural investment over time, growth paths display cyclical patterns even in the absence of any shocks. Particularly interesting equilibrium features of these cycles include declines in output and asymmetries in the cyclic patterns displayed during expansions and recessions. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E22, E32, O41.

This paper documents changes in the cyclical behavior of nominal data series that appear after 1979:Q3 when the Federal Reserve implemented a policy to lower the inflation rate. Such changes were not apparent in real variables. A business cycle model with impulses to technology and a role for money is used to show how alternative money supply rules are expected to affect observed business cycle facts. In this model, changes in the money supply rules have almost no effect on the cyclical behavior of real variables, yet have a significant impact on the cyclical nature of nominal variables. Computational experiments with alternative policy rules suggest that the change in monetary policy in 1979 may account for the sort of instability observed in the U.S. data.

Open economy extensions of real business cycle models, even if generally successful, have met some difficulties replicating a few important stylized facts. In particular, these models tend to predict excessive consumption smoothing and consumption correlations across countries. The observed negative correlation between the trade balance and output in developing countries, the variability of the trade balance and its correlation with the terms of trade have also proven difficult to reproduce. This paper considers how introduction of incomplete markets in the form of liquidity constraints can alleviate these problems. This analysis suggests that adding liquidity constraints helps predict the variability of consumption relative to output. It also improves our estimate of the correlation between the trade balance and output. The model correctly replicates the small positive correlation between the terms of trade and the trade balance. However, it slightly underpredicts the variability of the trade balance when 50% of the consumers are assumed to be liquidity constrained. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E13, E32, E44.

This paper studies, within a general equilibrium model, the dynamics of Y2K-type shocks: anticipated, permanent losses in output whose magnitude can be lessened by investing resources in advance. The implied dynamics replicate three observed characteristics of those triggered by the Y2K bug: (1) Precautionary investment: investment in solving the Y2K problem begins before the year 2000; (2) Investment delay: although economic agents have been aware of the Y2K problem since the 1960s, investment did not begin until recently; (3) Investment acceleration: as the new millennium approaches, the amount of resources allocated to solving the Y2K problem increases. In addition, the model predicts that Y2K investment peaks at the end of 1999. (Copyright: Elsevier)

In a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium framework, we introduce the concept of capacity utilization (as opposed to capital utilization). We consider an economy where monopolistic firms use a putty-clay technology and decide on their productive capacity and technology under under uncertainty. An idiosyncratic uncertainty about the exact position of the demand curve faced by each firm explains why some productive capacities remain idle and why individual capacity utilization rates differ across firms. A variable capacity utilization allows for a good description of some of the main stylized facts of the business cycle, propagates and magnifies aggregate technological shocks and generates endogenous persistence (i.e., the output growth rate displays positive serial correlation). (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper reexamines the “cost of business cycle” calculations made by Lucas (“Models of Business Cycles,” Basil Blackwell, New York, 1987) and Imrohoroglǔ( J. Polit. Econ. 97 (1989), 1364–1383) under alternative specifications of individuals' risk preferences and using alternative specifications of the stochastic process for per capita consumption. I find that for a class of preferences used by Epstein and Zin ( J. Monetary Econom. 26 (1990), 387–407), in an analysis of the equity premium puzzle, which display “first-order” risk aversion, the welfare cost of business cycles is potentially much larger than previous estimates. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E32, D81.