Technology, Employment, and the Business Cycle: Do Technology Shocks Explain Aggregate Fluctuations?

The author estimate a decomposition of productivity and hours into technology and nontechnology components. Two results stand out: (1) the estimated conditional correlations of hours and productivity are negative for technology shocks, positive for nontechnology shocks; and (2) hours show a persistent decline in response to a positive technology shock. Most of the results hold for a variety of model specifications and for the majority of G7 countries. The picture that emerges is hard to reconcile with a conventional real-business-cycle interpretation of business cycles but is shown to be consistent with a simple model with monopolistic competition and sticky prices.