Revisiting the one type permanent shocks hypothesis: Aggregate fluctuations in a multi-sector economy

This paper relies on sectoral-level data to interpret aggregate fluctuations of labor productivity and employment in US as due to exogenous disturbances. A shock determining permanent effect on the real investment good price may reasonably be interpreted as an investment-specific technology shock, since it mainly produces long-run effect on labor productivity in the durable goods producing sector. A transitory shock on the real investment price may instead be interpreted as a sectorneutral disturbance since it homogeneously affects the labor productivity across sectors. Finally, sectoral evidence suggests that the near-zero correlation between aggregate productivity and employment growth rates may be explained as the overall outcome of positive and negative correlations within, respectively, the durable and nondurable goods producing sectors.