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  3. American Economic Review
  4. September 2009
  5. Can News about the Future Drive the Business Cycle?

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Can News about the Future Drive the Business Cycle?

  • Nir Jaimovich
  • Sergio Rebelo
American Economic Review
vol. 99, no. 4, September 2009
(pp. 1097–1118)
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Abstract

Aggregate and sectoral comovement are central features of business cycles, so the ability to generate comovement is a natural litmus test for macroeconomic models. But it is a test that most models fail. We propose a unified model that generates aggregate and sectoral comovement in response to contemporaneous and news shocks about fundamentals. The fundamentals that we consider are aggregate and sectoral total factor productivity shocks as well as investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and preferences that allow us to parameterize the strength of short-run wealth effects on the labor supply. (JEL E13, E20, E32)

Citation

Jaimovich, Nir, and Sergio Rebelo. 2009. "Can News about the Future Drive the Business Cycle?" American Economic Review, 99 (4): 1097–1118. DOI: 10.1257/aer.99.4.1097

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • E13 General Aggregative Models: Neoclassical
  • E20 Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment: General (includes Measurement and Data)
  • E32 Business Fluctuations; Cycles