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...

Is consumption more or less variable than predicted by the permanent-income hypothesis? To answer that question, the author develops a procedure based on a long-run restriction implied by the consumer's intertemporal budget constraints. In contrast to previous work, the approach here (1) does...

Over the postwar period, many industrialized countries have experienced significant medium-frequency oscillations between periods of robust growth versus relative stagnation. Conventional business cycle filters, however, tend to sweep these oscillations into the trend. In this paper we explore...

This paper develops a simple neoclassical model of the business cycle in which the condition of borrowers' balance sheets is a source of output dynamics. The mechanism is that higher borrower net worth reduces the agency costs of financing real capital investments. Business upturns improve net...