Real Business Cycle Model Research Articles

The Medium Is the Measure: Technical Change and Employment, 1909—1949

Abstract New indicators, based on technology titles, are used to measure the impact of innovative activity on the U.S. labor market between 1909 and 1949. We find that positive technology shocks raised productivity, employment, vacancies, and labor turnover and lowered unemployment and business failures. Moreover, automotive and electrical innovations (quintessential general-purpose technologies) had a greater positive impact on employment than those in mechanical innovations. The overall results, compatible with the predictions of the real business cycle model, raise questions about the anemic recovery in employment after 1934 since the strong upsurge in technical change failed to be accompanied by vigorous job expansion.

Advantages of an Ellipse when Modeling Leisure Utility

This paper characterizes a specification for the utility of leisure that is based on the general equation for an ellipse. We show that this functional form has multiple benefits. The elliptical utility function provides Inada conditions at both the upper-bound and lower-bound constraints on labor supply, which is not the case for the two most common alternative functions. The presence of these two Inada conditions in the elliptical utility of leisure specification speeds up the computation by a factor between three and six times. We further show that the elliptical utility of leisure function is a close approximation to the constant relative risk aversion and constant Frisch elasticity functions in terms of marginal utilities, microeconomic outcomes in a life cycle model, and macroeconomic outcomes in a simple real business cycle model.

Inequality Causes Recessions: A Fallout from Ramsey's Conjecture

I show how the mechanisms of debt relief, redistribution and the uncertainty related to them could boil down to a discount rate shock for an aggregate representative agent. The mechanism hails from Ramsey's conjecture and the relationship between debt relief and the probability of repayment. To make this shock possible into a simple Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, I propose a two-capital setup, which provides an improved solution to the interest-rate-inelasticity issue than the usual investment adjustment costs by turning one type of capital into a fixed cost. Finally, I show the model's generality by adding wage rigidity and inflation. Considering the simplicity of the general equilibrium model, results provide a rich narrative for recessions.

OIL DEPENDENCE, INTERNATIONAL BORROWINGS, AND ECONOMIC INSTABILITY IN A SMALL OPEN ECONOMY

The existing literature dealing with mutual interactions between the extent of oil dependence and the possibility of belief-driven fluctuations unanimously ignores international loans. This simplified assumption disregards the fact that the relative magnitude of the financial account and the trade account exhibits an increasing trend. Faced with this deficiency in the literature, this paper develops a real business cycle model featuring oil dependence in domestic production and international loans, and examines whether both the presence of international borrowings and the dependence on imported energy will govern the emergence of belief-driven fluctuations.

News shocks and labour market dynamics in matching models

AbstractWe enrich a baseline real business cycle (RBC) model with search and matching frictions on the labour market and real frictions that are helpful in accounting for the response of macroeconomic aggregates to shocks. The analysis allows shocks to have an unanticipated and a news (i.e., anticipated) component. The Bayesian estimation of the model reveals that the model that includes news shocks on macroeconomic aggregates produces a remarkable fit of the data. News shocks in stationary and non‐stationary TFP, investment‐specific productivity and preference shocks significantly affect labour market variables and explain a sizeable fraction of macroeconomic fluctuations at medium‐ and long‐run horizons. Historically, news shocks have played a relevant role for output, but they have had a limited influence on unemployment.

Working Capital in a Closed Economy Real Business Cycle Model

One challenge in real business cycle (RBC) models is their performance in matching non-targeted data moments. In small open economy environment, exogenous interest rate has been widely used to bring additional volatility through the working capital. The role of working capital channel in a simple closed economy has not been explicitly investigated though. This paper explores the impacts of working capital on the business cycle statistics in a closed economy RBC framework. I illustrate that working capital on both inputs decreases the volatilities of consumption and output, whereas its impact on relative volatilities and first order autocorrelations is ambiguous. Working capital drives the correlation between consumption and output to a reasonable range. Moreover, when the working capital is only on one of the inputs, business cycle implications are more complicated. I also show that level of working capital is crucial for the degree of procyclicality of interest rate. The asymmetric effects of this channel on the business cycle moments suggest that it can be used in order to improve the performance of closed economy RBC models.

실물경기변동 모형을 이용한 해외석유가스 개발사업의 경제적 효과분석

해외자원개발은 부존자원이 빈약한 우리나라의 에너지 안보 역량을 제고할 수 있는 중요한 핵심 수단이다. 해외 석유가스개발사업의 경제적 파급효과를 분석하기 위하여 본 연구에서는 실물경기변동 모형을 에너지 가격을 포함한 형태로 확장하였다. 연산의 투명성과 효율성을 제고하기 위하여 선형이차 동태계획법을 적용하였다. 분석 결과, 해외석유개발 사업이 에너지 가격 안정화를 통해 경제에 미치는 효과는 GDP를 약 0.47% 증가시킨 효과 (2012년 GDP 기준 연간 약 5.7조 원)에 비견되는 것으로 평가되어, 해외석유개발사업에의 지속적인 투자 확대와 지원이 필요함을 알 수 있다. The development of overseas resource is a driving force to secure the energy security in Korea with low sufficiency rate of energy. This paper analyzes the effect of overseas oil resource development on the economy by presenting a real business cycle model with consolidated energy price index. A linear-quadratic dynamic programming is adopted to raise computational transparency and efficiency. The analysis shows that the overseas oil resource development project during 2010 and 2012 decreases the energy price by 1.2% per annum which effect is equivalent to the positive 0.47% to the GDP. The implication calls for steady and robust support for overseas resource development projects to enhance energy resilience.

An R&D-based real business cycle model

The New Keynesian Real Business Cycle model with staggered price adjustment is augmented with an R&D producing sector. Two sources of economic shocks are considered, namely random participation (perturbances to the value of alternative investment opportunities in another sector) and financial intermediation (shocks to the cost of raising capital in the financial intermediation market). We find that, when compared to the baseline model, both models can explain procyclical R&D spending. Additionally, the investment oversensitivity problem is corrected. However, only the financial intermediation model is consistent with the observed finding that the volatility of R&D is larger than those of investment and output.

Can civilian disability pensions overcome the poverty issue? A DSGE analysis for Italian data

In Italy, poverty and disability are two strictly related issues. Households with disabled members continuously face a poverty risk. We simulate a simple Real Business Cycle model to investigate the macroeconomic effects of a permanent increase of civilian disability pensions. We stress the effectiveness of such a policy to stimulate private consumptions. The exercise is implemented via the reduction—both temporary and permanent—of public spending. Results show both the long- and short-run trade-off the policy maker has to deal with when the disability-poverty dualism becomes a relevant issue. In the long-run, a minimum increase of civilian disability pensions allows households with a disabled member to consume more and to exit from poverty condition. However, while temporary decline of public consumption entails a larger decrease of income inequality between the two groups of households, permanent reduction dampens the unavoidable recessionary effect. In the short-run, a temporary reduction of public spending causes an immediate surge of the consumption of households with a disabled member at a cost of a deep recession. By the opposite, a permanent public spending reduction softens the unavoidable output slump but private consumptions only gradually increase.

Asset Prices in Production Economies with an Endogenous Extensive Margin

In economies that exhibit love-for-variety either in preferences or technology, the official consumer price index differs from the welfare-based price aggregator. This wedge implies that the stochastic discount factor should be adjusted to account for changes in the range of goods. This paper shows that a real business cycle model with endogenous entry fits aggregate quantities while featuring a higher risk premium when changes in growth variety are properly accounted. Moreover, adding the growth rate of establishments, as a proxy for growth variety, helps the standard consumption-based model to deliver lower pricing errors for the cross-section of stock returns.

MODELING THE EVOLUTION OF EXPECTATIONS AND UNCERTAINTY IN GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM

We develop methods to solve general equilibrium models in which forward‐looking agents are subject to waves of pessimism, optimism, and uncertainty that turn out to critically affect macroeconomic outcomes. Agents in the model are fully rational and conduct Bayesian learning, and they know that they do not know. Therefore, agents take into account that their beliefs will evolve according to what they will observe. This framework accommodates both gradual and abrupt changes in beliefs and allows for an analytical characterization of uncertainty. We use a prototypical Real Business Cycle model to illustrate the methods.

Structural VARs, Deterministic and Stochastic Trends: Does Detrending Matter?

Detrending within structural vector autoregressions (SVAR) is directly linked to the shock identification. We investigate the consequences of trend misspecification in an SVAR using both standard real business cycle models and bi-variate SVARs as data generating processes. Our bias decomposition reveals biases arising directly from trend misspecification are not trivial when compared to other widely studied misspecifications. Misspecifying the trend also distorts impulse response functions of even the correctly detrended variable within the SVAR system. Pretesting for unit roots mitigates trend misspecification to some extent. We also find that while practitioners can specify high lag order VARs to mitigate trend misspecification, relying on common information criterion such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC) or Bayesian information criterion (BIC) may choose a lag order that is too low.

Intangible investments and international business cycles

Intangible capital is an increasingly important factor of production in advanced economies. Governments in Europe and elsewhere promote investment in intangible assets. However, the potential role of intangibles for business cycles and the international transmission of shocks is not well understood. In this paper, we investigate the international business cycle effects of intangible capital. To this aim, we build an otherwise standard two-country real business cycle model augmented by a production sector for intangibles and allow for the non-rivalrous use of intangible capital in the production of final output goods and new intangibles. We find that a model including intangibles is associated with international co-movement of tangible investment, which is a feature observed in the data that many models fail to produce.

Productivity shocks, capital intensities, and bank interest rates

This paper proposes a real business cycle model in which banks are focused on their traditional role of providing loans to industrial corporations and face significant resource costs to provide financial services. We find that resource costs explain a large share of bank interest margins, which generates a floor for the interest rate on loans. Idiosyncratic shocks hitting the banking industry generate non-negligible effects on the rest of the economy, but their impact on wages and the rental rate of capital is rather small. The pro-cyclicality of the banking sector is therefore unlikely to feed back strongly to economic activity in the absence of large wealth effects on household. Positive productivity shocks hitting the industrial sector induce sizable increases of the rate on loans and sharp increases in the total hours worked in the banking system. Economy-wide negative technological shocks do indeed generate losses in the banking industry that are not only substantial but are proportionally larger than in the industrial sector. Large banking crises may emerge as a consequence of negative technological shocks hitting bank borrowers.

Unemployment and Econometric Learning

We apply well-known results of the econometric learning literature to the Mortensen-Pissarides real business cycle model. The unique rational expectations equilibrium (REE) is always expectationally stable with decreasing gain learning, and this result is robust to over-parametrisation of the econometric model relative to the minimum state variable form used by agents (Strong E-stability). And so, from this perspective, the assumption of rational expectations in the model is not unreasonable. However, using a parametrisation with UK data, simulations suggest that the implied rate of convergence to the REE with least squares learning is slow. The cyclical response of unemployment to structural shocks is muted under learning, and a parametrisation which guarantees root-t convergence is generally not consistent with attempts to match the observed volatility of labour market data using the standard model.

Entrepreneurship Vulnerability to Business Cycle. A New Methodology for Identification Pro-Cyclical and Counter-Cyclical Patterns of Entrepreneurial Activity

In literature, there is ongoing discussion whether entrepreneurial activity, approximated by, for instance, changes in self-employment, tends to behave pro-cyclically, counter-cyclically or rather is a-cyclical. Thus far, both theoretical and empirical evidence, where various multiple methodological approaches are used, does not provide clear answer to the latter; while widely offered explanations are scattered and lack robustness. Regarding the latter, some evidence may be traced in works of Kollinger and Thurik (2012), which using data for 22 OECD countries over the period 1972-2007, use Granger-causality tests to verify if entrepreneur activities are leading or lagging indicator over the business cycles; and their findings they show that entrepreneurship is leading indicator of the business cycle. Rampini (2004), using canonical real business cycle model, finds that entrepreneurship behaves pro-cyclical, which is associated with changes in risk aversion during respective phases of business cycle. Carmona et al. (2010), using quarterly data for self-employment and GDP in Spain and the United States, over the period 1987-2004, adopt the cross-correlations and VAR models to demonstrate that the hypothesis on pro-cyclicality of self-employment cannot be confirmed. At the same time, they present rather mixed results for various groups of self-employed. Klapper et al. (2014), using data for 109 countries over the period 2002-2012, find that entrepreneurial behavior demonstrates strong pro-cyclical patterns. More recent evidence may be also found in works of, inter alia, Parker (2002), Parker et al. (2012a,b), Milan et al. (2012), Baptista and Preto (2011).This paper is designed to contribute to the present state of the art, by presenting a novel methodological approach to identification of the relationship between the intensity of entrepreneurial activity and business cycle. Put differently, we aim unveil if entrepreneurship (approximated by changes in self-employment) behaves pro-cyclically, counter-cyclically or a-cyclically. To exemplify our new conceptual approach, we use quarterly data on deflated gross domestic product and self-employment. The empirical evidence presents the case of Italy. The period of analysis is restricted to the years 1995-2014. All statistics are extracted from OECD datasets on Annual Labor Force and Gross Domestic Product.

How Accounting Accuracy Affects DSGE Models

This paper explores how accounting consistency affects DSGE models. As many DSGE models descended from real business cycle models, I explore a simple labor-only RBC model and then a simple capital-and-labor RBC model with an exogenous external sector introduced. The conclusion reached in this paper is that once an external sector is introduced, DSGE models may suffer from accounting inconsistency, unless disequilibrium or some non-orthodox theory of price level, real monetary supply or bonds is accepted. Then this paper explores several other cases that suffer from accounting inconsistency even without introduction of an external sector. In some of these cases, deficit spending may be a key to not falling into disequilibrium.

Structural and Cyclical Effects of Tax Progression

In a real business cycle model with labor market frictions, we find that a more progressive tax schedule reduces structural unemployment as it fosters long-run incentives for job creation. Because there exists an optimal level of unemployment in a matching environment (“Hosios condition”), tax progression improves steady-state welfare up to a certain threshold and harms it beyond that. However, tax progression increases the costs of business cycles for those consumers who can save and borrow, while it reduces the business cycle costs for households with limited asset market participation (“rule-of-thumb” consumers). Our analysis suggests that business cycle effects dominate steady-state effects. On the aggregate level, tax progression is welfare-enhancing up to a certain threshold and always shifts relative utility from optimizing to rule-of-thumb consumers. These findings are quite robust to alternative calibrations of our model.

Trade Finance Affects Trade Dynamics

Existent literature is by no means conclusive on the effects of trade finance on trade and the economy. We propose a suitable framework to explore the linkages between international trade and finance based on an international real business cycle model where firms require external finance to import and can be financially constrained. We find that credit shocks do affect the dynamic properties of the economy and they have the potential to cause significant deviations in trade and economic performance. The trade-to-GDP ratio falls following a negative credit shock, as the shock reduces the capability of firms to purchase foreign intermediate goods, thereby reducing efficiency and production. However, it forces a demand substitution towards domestic intermediate goods that limits GDP deterioration. We also find that financially developed countries trade more, are richer and more stable in terms of GDP and consumption, consistent with the empirical evidence. Finally, the model sheds light on persistent contradictions between theoretical business-cycle and their empirical counterparts, namely, the consumption/output anomaly and the volatility of consumption, imports and terms of trade relative to GDP.

Business Cycles, Informal Economy, and Interest Rates in Emerging Countries

This paper recognizes the importance of a large informal economy and interest rate fluctuations for business cycles in emerging countries. I document (1) a positive relationship between the relative volatility of consumption to output and the size of the informal economy, and (2) countercyclical interest rates in emerging countries. I show that in a two-sector real business cycle model of a small open economy with a poorly measured informal sector, an increase in country interest rate generates a contraction in output, consumption, investment, hours, an improvement in trade balance-to-output ratio, and an expansion of informal sector.