High frequency real business cycles

Abstract

This paper investigates how the choice of timing interval within a standard real business cycle (RBC) model can help resolve two well-known labor-market puzzles. Standard quarterly RBC models have had difficulty replicating certain empirical regularities arising from the US labor market. A weekly version of the RBC model is able to partially resolve these puzzles. The improvement in the performance of the model is due to the interaction between theoretical modifications to the standard RBC model and careful accounting for the sampling properties of US aggregate data.