Aggregate economic activity was heavily influenced by the construction sector's expansion, collapse, and failure to revive during the interwar years. The 1920s building boom was the first to respond to the potential of the automobile and the last to be largely unplanned. Its uncoordinated...

Real business cycles in China are different than in many other countries, including consumption being more volatile than output and uncorrelated with investment. To study whether Chinese institutions can account for these features, we expand the standard real business cycle model with private...