This paper extends the real business cycle model with fiscal policy to allow for endogenous government expenditures and taxes. Fiscal policy in the model is determined by a government that seeks to maximize the welfare of a representative household under the assumption of commitment. On the...

This paper puts forward a systematic approach to teaching simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models to undergraduates. It proceeds in the following way: first, the structural model of the economy, which includes the households' and firms' problems, is presented and...

We solve a real business cycle model with rational inattention (an RI-RBC model). In the RI-RBC model, the growth rates of employment, investment, and output are about as persistent as in the data, with an amount of inattention consistent with survey data on expectations. Moreover, consumption,...

Recent work on the effects of permanent technology shocks argue that the basic RBC model cannot account for a negative correlation between hours worked and labor productivity. In this paper, I show that this conjecture is not necessarily correct. In the basic RBC model, I find that hours worked...

This paper contributes to the on-going empirical debate regarding the role of the RBC model and in particular of technology shocks in explaining aggregate fluctuations. To this end we estimate the model's posterior density using Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) methods. Within this framework we...

Using a German firm-level data set, this paper is the first to jointly study the cyclical properties of the cross-sections of firm-level real value added and Solow residual innovations, as well as capital and employment adjustment. We find two new business cycle facts: 1) The cross-sectional...

Is time-varying firm-level uncertainty a major cause or amplifier of the business cycle? This paper investigates this question in the context of a heterogeneous-firm RBC model with persistent firm-level productivity shocks and lumpy capital adjustment, where cyclical changes in uncertainty...

In this paper, we first introduce investment-specific technology (IST) shocks to an otherwise standard international real business cycle model and show that a thoughtful calibration of them along the lines of Raffo (2009) successfully addresses the "quantity," "international comovement,"...