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Discussion Paper
Hours and employment variation in business cycle theory
Previous business cycle models have made the assumption that all the variation in the labor input is either due to changes in hours per worker or changes in number of workers, but not both. In this paper, both vary. We think this a better model for estimating the contribution of Solow technology shocks to aggregate fluctuations. We find that about 70 percent of U.S. postwar cyclical fluctuations are induced by variations in the Solow technology parameter.
Working Paper
The nominal facts and the October 1979 policy change
Gavin and Kydland (1999) calculated the cyclical properties of money and prices for the periods before and after the October 1979 policy change. In this article, we extend that work by adding four more years of data and including a study of nominal interest rates and inflation. The adoption of a disinflation policy in October 1979 does not appear to have had a measurable impact on the cyclical properties of real variables. However, it made a dramatic difference in the cyclical properties of nominal variables. We also examine the covariance structure of several nominal relationships: the ...
Journal Article
Alternative monetary constitutions and the quest for price stability
This article reviews the various means through which governments and central banks have sought to guarantee long-run price stability. Finn Kydland and Mark Wynne argue that monetary regimes or standards can all be viewed as more or less successful attempts to overcome the well-known time-consistency problem in monetary policy. The classical gold standard, which prevailed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, can be interpreted as a monetary policy rule that delivered long-run price stability. The fiat monetary standard adopted by countries following the abandonment of gold ...
Working Paper
Monetary aggregates and output
This paper offers a general equilibrium model that explains how the observed correlations of money and output fluctuations may come about through endogenously determined fluctuations in the money multiplier. The model is calibrated to meet long run features of the U.S. economy (including monetary features) and then subjected to shocks to the Solow residual following a random process like that observed in U.S. data. The model's predicted business-cycle frequency correlations, of both real and nominal variables, share the following features with U.S. data: i) M1 is positively correlated with ...
Working Paper
Nominal rigidities in debt and product markets
Standard models used for monetary policy analysis rely on sticky prices. Recently, the literature started to explore also nominal debt contracts. Focusing on mortgages, this paper compares the two channels of transmission within a common framework. The sticky price channel is dominant when shocks to the policy interest rate are temporary, the mortgage channel is important when the shocks are persistent. The first channel has significant aggregate effects but small redistributive effects. The opposite holds for the second channel. Using yield curve data decomposed into temporary and persistent ...
Working Paper
The computational experiment: an econometric tool
A specification of the steps in designing a computational experiment to address a well-posed quantitative question, emphasizing that the computational experiment is an econometric tool used in the task of deriving the quantitative implications of theory.
Discussion Paper
Dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade: the J-curve revisited
We provide a new interpretation of the statistical relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade. This relation includes the J-curve, the tendency for trade balances to be negatively correlated with contemporaneous movements in the terms of trade, positively correlated with lagged movements. We document this property in international data and show that it arises, as well, in a two-country stochastic growth model. In the model trade dynamics result, in large part, from fluctuations in investment. A favorable productivity shock in the domestic economy leads to an increase in ...
Working Paper
Monetary aggregates and output
This paper offers a general equilibrium model that explains how the observed correlations of money and output fluctuations may come about through endogenously determined fluctuations in the money multiplier. The model is calibrated to meet long-run (including monetary) features of the U.S. economy; it is then subjected to shocks to the Solow residual following a random process similar to that observed in U.S. data.
Journal Article
Is the business cycle of Argentina "different?"
Despite the relative success of Real Business Cycle (RBC) models to replicate key moments of the business cycles of the United States and several European countries, economic research in Latin America tends to take the more traditional view that monetary factors play a predominant role in the economic fluctuations of countries in that part of the world. The different theoretical approach is often justified on the grounds that business cycles in Latin America are "different." However, few comparative studies have analyzed the relevant difference between the business cycles of Latin America ...
Report
The econometrics of the general equilibrium approach to business cycles
The founding fathers of the Econometric Society defined econometrics to be quantitative economic theory. A vision of theirs was the use of econometrics to provide quantitative answers to business cycle questions. The realization of this dream required a number of advances in pure theory?in particular, the development of modern general equilibrium theory. The econometric problem is how to use these tools along with measurement to answer business cycles questions. In this essay, we review this econometric development and contrast it with the econometric approach that preceded it.