Recent research shows that observed labor market flows can be explained in search and matching models only by assuming either implausibly large productivity shocks (Hall 2003) or an excessively high degree of real wage rigidity even for new hires (Shimer 2003). If this is not the case, the...

This paper aims at identifying the main shocks, which cause movements in real GNP. It does so by searching for two shocks in the context of a VAR model, which explain the majority of the k-step ahead prediction error variances in real GNP for horizons between 0 and 5 years. We find that two...