This paper shows how US monetary policy contributed to the drop in the volatility of US output fluctuations and to the decoupling of household investment from the business cycle. I estimate a model of household investment, an aggregate of non durable consumption and corporate sector investment,...

"This paper evaluates to what extent the introduction of firing costs can affect the aggregate dynamics of a neoclassical growth model with hetrogeneous establishments. Similarly to the previous literature, firing costs are found to have large steady- state effcts. However, they have no...

"In his famous 1987 monograph, Robert Lucas argued that further stabilizing the business cycles that persisted in the post-War era was pointless, because these cycles had a negligible effect on societal well- being. In particular, Lucas demonstrated that society should be willing to pay only a...