We use a business cycle model to analyze the general equilibrium implications of a representative agent's decision to devote time to skill acquisition activities, which are modeled as boosting subsequent labor productivity by increasing the stock of human capital. We use aggregate data on...

This paper studies the role of entry and exit in the short run behavior of a general equilibrium model with industry dynamics. For tractability, and to preserve potential asymmetries in the impulse responses, I focus on the transition dynamics of the economy after shocks. Entry and exit are...

Is there a trade-off between fluctuations and growth? The empirical evidence is mixed, with some studies finding a positive relationship, while others find a negative one. Our objectives are to understand how fundamental uncertainty affects the long run growth rate and to identify important...

We show that in a two-sector real business cycle model wtih sufficiently strong investment externalities, a regressive tax policy can stabilize the economy against fluctuations driven by agents' animal spirits. By contrast, this economy with a flat or progressive tax scheme (such as that in the...

We build a New Keynesian model of the business cycle with sticky prices and real wage rigidities motivated by efficiency wages of the gift exchange variety. Compared to a standard sticky price model, our Fair Wage model provides an explanation for structural unemployment and generates more...

In this paper we characterize and estimate the degree to which liquidity constraints affect real activity. We set up a dynamic model of firm investment and debt in which liquidity constraints enter explicitly into the firm's maximization problem, so that investment depends positively on the...

The papers in this volume study nine depressions - both from the interwar period in Europe and America and from more recent times and Latin America - using a common framework. All of the papers rely on growth accounting to decompose changes in output into the portions due to changes in factor...

This paper proposes a measure of the welfare cost of volatility derived from a stochastic endogenous growth model extended to the case of a recursive utility function which disentangles risk aversion from intertemporal elasticity of substitution. The measure of the welfare cost of volatility...

We extend the basic RBC model to allow for biased technical changes. One broad definition of biased technical changes is changes that directly affect factor elasticities. Given the link between changes in factor elasticities and factor shares, observed fluctuations in US labor's share are...

Many asset pricing puzzles can be explained when habit formation is added to standard preferences. We show that utility functions with a habit then gives rise to a puzzle of consumption volatility in place of the asset pricing puzzles when agents can choose consumption and labor optimally in...