This paper documents the main stylized features of macroeconomic fluctuations for 12 developing countries. Cross-correlations between domestic industrial output and a large group of macroeconomic variables (including fiscal variables, wages, inflation, money, credit, trade, and exchange rates)...

Employer-provided nonwage benefit expenditures now account for one-third of U.S. firms' labor costs. We show that a broad measure of real labor costs including such benefit expenditures has become countercyclical during 1982-2014, contrary to the conventional view that labor costs are...