This is a specific investigation of the importance of technological change specific to new investment goods for postwar U.S. aggregate fluctuations. A growth model that incorporates this form of technological change is calibrated to U.S. data and simulated, using the relative price of new...

We identify the cyclical turning points of 74 U.S. manufacturing industries and uncover new empirical regularities: (i) Cyclical phase shifts are highly concentrated around the aggregate turning points; (ii) In contrast to the conventional notion of a sudden stop and slow recovery, troughs are...

A search-theoretic model of equilibrium unemployment is constructed and shown to be consistent with the key regularities of the labor market and business cycle. The two distinguishing features of the model are: (i) the decision to accept or reject jobs is modeled explicitly, and (ii) markets are...

We argue that the behavior of manufacturing inventories provides evidence against models of business cycle fluctuations based on productivity shocks, increasing returns to scale, or favorable externalities, whereas it is consistent with models with short-run diminishing returns and procyclical...

This paper studies the implications of procyclical capital utilization rates for inference regarding cyclical movements in labor productivity and the degree of returns to scale. We organize our investigation around five questions that we study using a measure of capital services based on...

The Real Business Cycle (RBC) research program has grown spectacularly over the last decade, as its concepts and methods have diffused into mainstream macroeconomics. Yet, there is increasing skepticism that technology shocks are a major source of business fluctuations. This chapter exposits the...