In this paper we analyze a general equilibrium DSNK model characterized by labor indivisibilities, unemployment and a unionized labor market. The presence of monopoly unions introduces real wage rigidities in the model. We show that as in Blanchard Galì (2005) the so called "divine coincidence"...

In this paper, we propose a matching and search model with adjustment costs in the form of labor disruption charges that can generate counter-cyclical real wages. Empirically, we use a measure of wage cyclicality based on the generalized impulse response function of real wages to a shock in a...

There is no such thing as a real economy. The task, therefore, is to consistently reconstruct the fluctuations of employment and output from the interactions of real and nominal variables. The present paper does exactly this. No nonempirical concepts like utility, equilibrium, rationality,...

The U.S financial crisis started in October 2005. The level of new home starts would have replaced the total owner occupied housing stock in 37 years. Much faster than desirable. Mortgage interest rates also went up in same month. In 2006 mortgage lending went on unabated, but housing values did...

The U.S. manufacturing sector has become the poster child of the jobless recovery, the latest victim of the Bubble Economy. On Labor Day 2003 President Bush called for the creation of a new position of Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing in the Department of Commerce. The National Association...

This paper surveys evidence on fiscal multipliers from the Euro area and the United States obtained by direct, cross-state or economywide measures of the effects of broad-based tax cuts and increases in government purchases. In view of the evidence in the literature I conclude that that fiscal...

In this paper, I present a theory of dynamic economic growth, business cycles, and asset pricing that integrates (1) Marx's idea (and emphasized by Klein) of a two-class heterogeneity of the ownership structure of physical capital and human capital in a capitalist society, (2) Keynes' idea of...

This paper proposes a theory of investment fluctuations where the source of the oscillating dynamics is an agency problem between financiers and entrepreneurs. A central tenet of the theory is that investment decisions depend upon entrepreneurs’ initiative to select investment projects...

It is common knowledge that the standard New Keynesian model is not able to generate a persistent response in output to temporary monetary shocks. We show that this shortcoming can be remedied in a simple and intuitively appealing way through the introduction of labor turnover costs (such as...

A large body of literature explains the inferior position of unskilled workersby imposing a structural shift in the labor force skill composition. This papertakes a different approach by emphasizing the connection between cyclicalvariations in skilled and unskilled labor markets. Using a...