This paper applies 'Business Cycle Accounting' methodology introduced by Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2002a) to the UK economy. In particular, I examine the cyclical episode from 1979 to 1989. The chosen method enables me to decompose fluctuations in aggregates to isolate the effects...

This paper proposes a simple model that formalizes a variant of Ohanian's (2001) conjecture explaining the productivity declines observed in the Great Depression. If a large payment shock like an asset-price collapse renders many firms insolvent, other economic agents become exposed to a higher...

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...

What factors underlie industry differences in research intensity and productivity growth? We develop a multi-sector endogenous growth model allowing for industry-specific parameters in the production functions for output and knowledge, and in consumer preferences. We find that long run industry...

This paper augments the neoclassical growth model to study the macroeconomic effects of uninsured idiosyncratic investment, or capital-income, risk. Under standard assumptions for preferences and technologies, individual policy rules are linear in individual wealth, ensuring that the equilibrium...

We contribute to the debate on skill-biased technical change by studying the long-run dynamics of skill premia in an endogenous growth model in which technical change can be directed alternately towards different factors. We show that R&D resources tend to be directed alternately towards...

Standard international real business cycle models are generally unable to replicate the observed comovements of all the main aggregate variables: in particular, they generate low or negative international comovements in output, investment, and labour. I simulated a two-country, two-sector...

The main purpose of this study is to explore the interrelations between global economic growth and the changing composition of global trade. I define a global unbalanced growth path as a situation in which there exists a global constant return to capital. I use this definition to explore two...

We present a design of fiscal policy capable of providing the required incentives in order to make a decentralized economy with externalities move along the optimal transitional path in a Lucas-type human capital model. (Copyright: Elsevier)

A two-sector real business cycle model, estimated with postwar U.S. data, identifies shocks to the levels and growth rates of total factor productivity in distinct consumption- and investment-goods-producing technologies. This model attributes most of the productivity slowdown of the 1970s to...