During World War II and the Korean War, real GDP grew by about half the amount of the increase in government purchases. With allowance for other factors holding back GDP growth during those wars, the multiplier linking government purchases to GDP may be in the range of 0.7 to 1.0, a range...

Issues of labor supply are at the heart of macroeconomic explanations of the large cyclical fluctuations of output observed in modern economies. This paper starts with a serious empirical examination of the view that the labor market is always in balance-that every observed combination of...

We develop an equilibrium theory of business cycles driven by spikes in risk premiums that depress business demand for capital and labor. Aggregate shocks increase firms' uninsurable idiosyncratic risk and raise risk premiums. We show that risk shocks can create quantitatively realistic...

An equilibrium model of fluctuations has two components: an elastic labor supply schedule and a source of shifts of the labor demand schedule. In the real business cycle model, shifts of labor demand follow from vibrations in the production function. In the model of this paper, shifts of labor...

In modern economies, sharp increases in unemployment from major adverse shocks result in long periods of abnormal unemployment and low output. This chapter investigates the processes that account for these persistent slumps. The data are from the economy of the United States, and the discussion...

Using a recursive empirical model of the real interest rate, GDP growth, and the primary government deficit in the U.S., I solve for the ergodic distribution of the debt/GDP ratio. If such a distribution exists, the government is satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint. One key finding is...

Consumption and income tend to move together; the correlation of their first differences is about 0.14. In most accounts, the correlation is attributed to the upward slope of the consumption function. When the publicis better off, they consume more. But in the microeconomic theory of the...

The energy price shock depressed real output by two percent in 1974 and by five percent in 1975, according to our results. Prices rose by four percent in 1974 and by another two percent in 1975. These conclusions are derived from an aggregate model of the U.S. economy with an explicit role of...

It is a remarkable fact about the historical US business cycle that, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.55 percentage points per year. The economy seems to have had an irresistible force...

Unemployment recoveries in the US have been inexorable. It is a remarkable fact that, prior to 2020, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.1 log points per year. The economy seems to have an...