This paper explores the relationship between volatility and welfare. Even though households prefer smooth streams of consumption and leisure, welfare can be increasing in the volatility of an exogenous driving force if factor supply is sufficiently elastic. We provide some analytical results for...

How does the output response to a change in government spending vary over the business cycle? What are the welfare effects of spending shocks? This paper studies the state-dependence of the output and welfare effects of shocks to government purchases in a DSGE model with real and nominal...

activity.

We document several important changes in the nature of economic fluctuations that coincide with the onset of the Great Moderation and the Jobless Recoveries phenomenon. Labor productivity turned from strongly procyclical to countercyclical; sectoral reallocation of labor increased and became...

There seems to be a widespread belief among economists, policy-makers, and members of the media that the “confidence” of households and firms is a critical component of the transmission of fiscal policy shocks into economic activity. In this paper we take this proposition to the data. We use...

Nominal rigidities are known to be important for the transmission of monetary policy. We argue that nominal rigidities are important also for the transmission of technology shocks, especially for explaining their effects on hours and real wages. Evidence suggests that a positive technology shock...

Quel est l’impact des politiques des gouvernements sur l’activité économique au Québec et au Canada ? Les taxes ont-elles un effe t négatif par les distorsions qu’ elles induisent ? Les dépenses stimulent-elles l’activité ? Le bilan est-il neutre, positif ou négatif d’un point...

The cyclical behavior of real wages has evolved from mildly countercyclical during the interwar period to modestly procyclical in the postwar era. This paper presents a general-equilibrium business-cycle model that helps explain the evolution. In the model, changes in the real wage cyclicality...

The authors use a dynamic general equilibrium model to obtain quantitative estimates of the welfare cost of nominal wage contracting. They find that the welfare cost of such contracts can vary quite a lot depending on the degree of indexation, the size and persistence of monetary shocks, and the...