The postwar U.S. business cycle is characterized by positive comovement of employment and output across sectors. It has been argued that multi-sector growth models are inconsistent with this observation when changes in relative productivities are the main source of fluctuations. We suggest that...

What is the source of interest rate volatility? Why do low interest rates precede business cycle booms? Most observers tend to assume that monetary policy is largely responsible for it. Indeed, a standard real business cycle model delivers rather small fluctuations in real interest rates. Here,...

Whether technological progress raises or lowers aggregate employment in the short run has been the subject of much debate in recent years. Using a simple model of industry employment, we show that cross-industry differences of inventory holding costs, demand elasticities, and price rigidities...

Studying the incentives and constraints in the non-market sector — that is, home production — enhances our understanding of economic behavior in the market. In particular, it helps us to understand (1) small variations of labor supply over the life cycle, (2) large variations of employment...

This paper examines whether monetary indicators are useful in implementing optimal discretionary monetary policy when the policy maker has incomplete information about the environment. We find that money does not contain useful information for the policy maker, if we calibrate the model to the...

Standard search and matching models of equilibrium unemployment, once properly calibrated, can generate only a small amount of frictional wage dispersion, i.e., wage differentials among ex-ante similar workers induced purely by search frictions. We derive this result for a specific measure of...

These notes contain the derivations for results stated without proof in Hornstein (2007). First, I derive the log-linear approximation of the inflation dynamics in the Calvo-model with elements of backward-looking pricing when the approximation takes place around a positive average inflation...

In this chapter we inspect economic mechanisms through which technological progress shapes the degree of inequality among workers in the labor market. A key focus is on the rise of U.S. wage inequality over the past 30 years. However, we also pay attention to how Europe did not experience...

We study the aggregate implications of (S,s) inventory policies in a dynamic general equilibrium model with aggregate uncertainty. Firms in the model's retail sector face idiosyncratic demand risk, and (S,s) inventory policies are optimal because of fixed order costs. The distribution of...

In an economy where growth is determined by the interaction of R&D and learning-by-doing (LBD), changes of factors that stimulate either one of these activities affect growth differently than in an economy where growth is determined by either R&D or LBD alone. In particular, when firms...