We analyze a real business cycle model in which the government optimally chooses public investment and nonmilitary current expenditures, to maximize the welfare of the representative private agent. We characterize the optimal response of endogenous spending to shocks to technology and to...

We incorporate nominal wage contracts and government into a quantitative general equilibrium framework. Thus, our model includes three types of shocks: a fiscal shock, a monetary shock, and a technology shock. We show that it is possible in this type of environment to generate a low correlation...

Barksy-Miron [1989] find that the postwar U.S. economy exhibits a regular seasonal cycle, as well as the business cycle phenomenon. Are these findings consistent with current equilibrium business cycle theories as surveyed by Prescott [1986]? We consider a dynamic, stochastic equilibrium...

This paper begins with the observation that the volatility of factor input growth is insufficient to explain the volatility in the growth rate of output, and explores the empirical plausibility of the hypothesis that this fact is due to the presence of productive externalities and increasing...

Since the primary role of international financial linkages is to facilitate consumption smoothing in the face of country-specific shocks, the degree of international financial integration should play an important role in the international transmission of business cycles. This paper therefore...

Three key features of the employment process in the U.S. economy are that job creation is procyclical, job destruction is countercyclical, and job creation is less volatile than job destruction. These features are also found at the sectoral (goods and services) level. The paper develops,...

Does the magnitude of a trough in employment differ from the magnitude of a peak in employment, and is the time employment spends in rising from a trough to a peak longer than the time spends in falling from a peak to a trough? In this paper we measure the “asymmetry of magnitudes” and the...

Staggered price and staggered wage contracts are commonly viewed as similar mechanisms in generating persistent real effects of monetary shocks. In this paper, we distinguish the two mechanisms in a general equilibrium framework. We show that, although the dynamic price setting and the dynamic...

Results in Lucas (1987) suggest that if public policy can affect the growth rate of the economy, the welfare implications of alternative policies will be large. In this paper, a stochastic, dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous growth and money is examined. In this setting, inflation...

This study focuses on the analysis of energy price shocks in the generation of business cycle phenomena. These shocks are transmitted through endogenous fluctuations in capital utilization. The production structure of the model gives rise to an empirical measure of ‘true’ technology growth...