In this paper a two-sector growth model allowing indeterminacy to occur at relatively mild degrees of increasing returns is developed. It is shown that these economies of scale need only be present in one sector of the economy (investment). This feature of the model, therefore, builds on...

This paper analyzes the robustness of the estimate of a positive productivity shock on hours to the presence of a possible unit root in hours. Estimations in levels or in first differences provide opposite conclusions. We rely on an agnostic procedure in which the researcher does not have to...

Recently, Gali and others find that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for...

Recently, Galí and others find that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for...

The one-sector Solow-Ramsey growth model informs how most modern researchers characterize macroeconomic trends and cycles, and evidence supporting the model's balanced growth predictions is often cited. This paper shows, however, that the inclusion of recent data leads to the balanced growth...

We develop a stochastic general equilibrium model in which maintenance endogenously affects the capital depreciation rate. The model performs well in generating maintenance series that match closely existing survey-based measures for Canada. Maintenance is procyclical and comoves almost always...

Conventional RBC models have been heavily criticized for their inability to generate the estimated negative correlations of hours and productivity in response to technology shocks ('productivity-hours puzzle'). In this paper we show that by just enhancing the standard frame- work with investment...

The present paper revisits a property embedded in most dynamic macroeconomic models: the stationarity of hours worked. First, I argue that, contrary to what is often believed, there are many reasons why hours could be nonstationary in those models, while preserving the property of balanced...

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a set of variables is informationally sufficient, i.e. it contains enough information to estimate the structural shocks with a VAR model. Based on such conditions, we suggest a procedure to test for informational sufficiency. Moreover, we...