We study the welfare implications of uncertainty in business cycle models. In the modern business cycle literature, multiplicative real shocks to production and/or preferences play an important role as the impulses that produce aggregate fluctuations. Introducing shocks in this way has the...

This paper analyzes the welfare costs of business cycles when workers face uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. In accordance with the previous literature, this paper decomposes labor income risk into an aggregate and an idiosyncratic component, but in contrast to the previous...

This paper uses a tractable macroeconomic model with idiosyncratic human capital risk and incomplete markets to analyze the growth and welfare effects of business cycles. The analysis is based on the assumption that the elimination of business cycles eliminates the variation in idiosyncratic...

This paper evaluates the extent to which a DSGE model can account for the impact of tax policy shocks. We estimate the response of macroeconomic aggregates to anticipated and unanticipated tax shocks in the U.S. and find that unanticipated tax cuts have persistent expansionary effects on output,...

How do information flows influence business cycle dynamics in models with anticipated (news shocks) and unanticipated innovations? To address this question, we show how alternative specifications of news affect the equilibrium by deriving the mapping between news shocks and the endogenous...

We explore the effects of financial shocks in heterogeneous agent economies with aggregate savings and with frictions in some consumption markets, where demand contributes to productivity. Households of various wealth and earnings levels search for goods at different intensities and pay...

The bond yield dynamics implied by a welfare-maximizing monetary policy and its credibility are explored in general equilibrium. Credibility is captured by a regime change from discretion to commitment. The policy determines the optimal output and inflation responses to a source of inflation...

Two key components of the recent U.S. health reform are a new regulation of the individual health insurance market and an increase in income redistribution in the economy. Which component contributes more to the welfare outcome of the reform? We address this question by constructing a general...

The life-cycle patterns of consumption, wage and hours inequality observed in U.S. cross-section data are commonly viewed as incompatible with a Pareto efficient allocation. We determine the extent to which these qualitative and quantitative patterns can or cannot be produced by Pareto efficient...

We use balance sheet and National Income and Products Accounts (NIPA) data to calibrate factor shares in a model with three factors (land, labor, and capital) and three sectors (business, household, and government). These estimates are used in an overlapping generations model with land to study...