"Gali and Rabanal provide statistical evidence that, in their view, puts into question the real business cycle paradigm in favor of the sticky-price paradigm. I demonstrate that their statistical procedure is easily misled in that they would reach the same conclusions even if their data had been...

We empirically analyse the response of US manufacturing labour market variables to various shocks, notably to trade openness and technology. The econometric approach involves an application of the recently developed global VAR (GVAR) methodology of Dees, DiMauro, Pesaran, and Smith (2005) to 12...

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the...