NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Technology Commitment and the Cost of Economic Fluctuations

Garey Ramey, Valerie A. Ramey

NBER Working Paper No. 3755*
Issued in June 1991
NBER Program(s):   EFG

When firms must make technology commitments, economic fluctuations impose costs in the form of ex post inefficiency in production technology. We present a general equilibrium model in which, due to the presence of technology commitment, greater volatility of productivity shocks leads to lower mean output. When 1earning-by-doing is incorporated, mean output becomes permanently lower as a consequence of higher volatility. The negative and persistent relationship between mean and variance of output implied by our model is strongly verified by the data. We estimate that observed volatility has imposed a cost amounting to almost two percentage points of U.S. GNP growth.

*Published: American Economic Review

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