We perform an empirical evaluation of the role of capacity utilization in business cycle fluctuations. We first document the relation between capacity utilization and business cycle fluctuations in historical data and then verify whether these empirical features can be explained by a dynamic...

In this paper, we test whether labor-hoarding environments with basic and augmented laws of motion provide an adequate explanation for observed business cycle dynamics. The basic law of motion assumes that the information set used by economic agents to forecast future forcing variables includes...

In this paper, we introduce a dynamic general equilibrium model with numerous and heterogeneous investment projects and endogenous occupational choice to study a credit crunch. The investment decision is determined through the occupational choice of households which is driven by the endogenous...

Japan has gone through a long period of stagnation in the 1990s. We use a model of financial intermediation and endogenous occupational choice to understand this stagnation. In this model, investment projects are partly financed by loans and banks screen candidates by looking at their wealth....

This paper studies a credit crunch in a dynamic general equilibrium model economy with numerous and heterogeneous investment projects. Banks provide loans to endogenously arising entrepreneurs and deposit to the rest of the population. The credit crunch is caused by conservative lending policies...

We test whether dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium artificial economies associated with several labor market institutions provide an adequate characterization of aggregate employment volatility and dynamics. Our test is robust to possible misspecifications about the information set used by...

This paper studies a general-equilibrium model of a dynamic economy with menu costs. Each firm's productivity is exposed to idiosyncratic and aggregate productivity shocks around a trend, and the money supply to monetary shocks around a trend. All consumption, pricing, and production decisions...

This paper studies a general equilibrium model with multiple stages of production and sticky prices. Working through the input-output relations among industries at different stages and the timing of firms' pricing decisions, the model generates persistent fluctuations in both the inflation rate...

The business cycle implications of optimal wage indexation are investigated in a dynamic general equilibrium model with wage contracts. As in Gray's seminal contribution on wage indexation, it is shown that the optimal degree of indexation depends on the relative volatilities of monetary and...

We build a dynamic general equilibrium model of a semi-small open economy in which staggered wage contracts are the only source of nominal rigidity. The model is capable of generating highly variable real and nominal exchange rates while predicting relative variabilities of prices and...