Quantitative Business Cycle Theory

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The purpose of this research is to determine what role technological change has played in affecting postwar domestic and world business cycles. Previous research has suggested that if such technological shocks were the only source of fluctuation, the variability of the aggregate U.S. economy would have been only about two-thirds as large as what has been observed. This project will investigate the sensitivity of those estimates to factors that have not yet been taken into account in a systematic way. A major factor is the role of international trade and the related question of how correlated domestic and foreign shocks are, and whether there are spill-over effects in technology across countries. Another important factor is human capital accumulation. A third is the role of consumer durables, an important component of aggregate output, which has received relatively little attention in real business cycle models. The strategy is both to construct computable general equilibrium models that can be used to perform laboratory experiments and to do measurements that are important for quantitatively restricting these models and, thus, improving the reliability of the answers to the questions being addressed. This research is important because it will increase our understanding of how technological change may influence the business cycle.