What are the fundamental driving forces of macroeconomic fluctuations? In particular, why do people spend more time working in booms and less in recessions? These are basic questions of macroeconomics. Recent thinking has emphasized technology shifts, preference shifts, and changes in government...

The energy price shock depressed real output by two percent in 1974 and by five percent in 1975, according to our results. Prices rose by four percent in 1974 and by another two percent in 1975. These conclusions are derived from an aggregate model of the U.S. economy with an explicit role of...

A remarkable fact about the historical US business cycle is that, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery begins, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate is stable at around one tenth of the current level of unemployment. We document this fact in a companion...

New data compel a new view of events in the labor market during a recession. Unemployment rises almost entirely because jobs become harder to find. Recessions involve little increase in the flow of workers out of jobs. Another important finding from new data is that a large fraction of workers...

The energy price shock depressed real output by two percent in 1974 and by five percent in 1975, according to our results. Prices rose by four percent in 1974 and by another two percent in 1975. These conclusions are derived from an aggregate model of the U.S. economy with an explicit role of...

We develop an equilibrium theory of business cycles driven by spikes in risk premiums that depress business demand for capital and labor. Aggregate shocks increase firms' uninsurable idiosyncratic risk and raise risk premiums. We show that risk shocks can create quantitatively realistic...

It is a remarkable fact about the historical US business cycle that, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.55 percentage points per year. The economy seems to have had an irresistible force...

Unemployment recoveries in the US have been inexorable. It is a remarkable fact that, prior to 2020, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.1 log points per year. The economy seems to have an...