Gold rushes are periods of economic boom, generally associated with large increases in expenditures aimed at securing claims near new found veins of gold. An interesting aspect of gold rushes is that, from a social point of view, much of the increased activity is wasteful since it contributes...

This paper uses aggregate Japanese data and sectoral U.S. data to explore the properties of the joint behavior of stock prices and total factor productivity (TFP) with the aim of highlighting data patterns that are useful for evaluating business cycle theories. The approach used follows that...

It is often argued that changes in expectation are an important driving force of the business cycle. However, it is well known that changes in expectations cannot generate positive co-movement between consumption, investment and employment in the most standard neo-classical business cycle...

In this paper we show that the joint behavior of stock prices and TFP favors a view of business cycles driven largely by a shock that does not affect productivity in the short run -- and therefore does not look like a standard technology shock -- but affects productivity with substantial delay...

Is over-optimism about a country's future growth perspective good for an economy, or does over-optimism also come with costs? In this paper we document that recessions, fiscal problems, as well as Balance of Payment-difficulties are more likely to arise in countries where past growth...

In this paper we present a generalized sticky price model which allows, depending on the parameterization, for demand shocks to maintain strong expansionary effects even in the presence of perfectly flexible prices. The model is constructed to incorporate the standard three-equation New...

This paper begins by re-examining the spectral properties of several cyclically sensitive variables such as hours worked, unemployment and capacity utilization. For each of these series, we document the presence of an important peak in the spectral density at a periodicity of approximately 36-40...

There is a long tradition in macroeconomics suggesting that market imperfections may explain why economies repeatedly go through periods of booms and busts, with booms sowing the seeds of the subsequent busts. This idea can be captured mathematically as a limit cycle. For several reasons, limit...

The cyclical behavior of the relative price of investment goods plays an important role in many modern macroeconomic models. In this paper we examine the behavior of several measures of the relative price of investment goods for the U.S. economy over the last fifty years. In particular, we...

Recessions often happen after periods of rapid accumulation of houses, consumer durables and business capital. This observation has led some economists, most notably Friedrich Hayek, to conclude that recessions mainly reflect periods of needed liquidation resulting from past over-investment....