News and Business Cycles in Open Economies

Nir Jaimovich, Sergio Rebelo

NBER Working Paper No. 13444
Issued in September 2007
NBER Program(s):   EFG   IFM

Aggregate and sectoral comovement are central features of business cycle data. Therefore, the ability to generate comovement is a natural litmus test for macroeconomic models. But it is a test that most existing models fail. In this paper we propose a unified model that generates both aggregate and sectoral comovement in response to contemporaneous shocks and news shocks about fundamentals. The fundamentals that we consider are aggregate and sectoral TFP shocks as well as investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and a new form of preferences that allow us to parameterize the strength of short-run wealth effects on the labor supply.

(435 K)

Published: Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2008. "News and Business Cycles in Open Economies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(8), pages 1699-1711, December.

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This paper was revised on October 14, 2008

Acknowledgments

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