Knowledge shifts and the business cycle: When boom turns to bust

Informational cascades can be used to augment the existing Austrian business cycle theory. As first-order users of knowledge know the direct causes of a price change, they transmit this knowledge to second-order users through the price system. Banks with direct knowledge of the sources of the fresh liquidity during a credit-induced boom have knowledge of the boom’s artificial and unsustainable nature. Higher order users lack this direct knowledge and hence continue investing largely ignorant of underlying developments. When first-order users of knowledge sense the boom has run its course, they exit the market, sending a strong signal to higher order knowledge users that the boom has ended—a fragile situation built upon an informational cascade begins collapsing. Simultaneously, the boom is characterized by an influx of capital and knowledge into the financial sector owing to increased profits relative to the real economy stemming from Cantillon effects surrounding the credit injection. As knowledge pertaining to real production has also exited, the bust commences with a misallocated productive structure requiring equilibration to become consistent with consumers’ wants. Actions which inhibit this knowledge from returning to the productive structure will unnecessarily lengthen the time to recovery.     

Urban growth and uninsured rural risk: Booming towns in bust times

Rapid urbanization also happens when economic growth and urban job creation are absent, such as in Africa and Latin America during the eighties. Why do some countries urbanize faster while having worse economic growth? This paper finds that higher aggregate agricultural risk induces rural-urban migration, providing an additional channel to explain the urbanization trend. Uninsurable expected risk will lead to rural-urban migration as a form of ex-ante insurance if households are liquidity constrained and cannot overcome adverse shocks. The effect is robust to controlling for the traditional view of urbanization driven by industrialization, and to several alternative explanations such as government spending.     

Multiple attractors and global bifurcations in a Kaldor-type business cycle model

We consider a Kaldor-type discrete-time nonlinear business cycle model in income and capital, where investment is assumed to depend both on the difference between normal and current levels of capital stock, and on the difference between the current income and its normal level, through a nonlinear S-shaped increasing function. As usual in Kaldor business cycle models, one or three steady states exist, and the standard analysis of the local stability and bifurcations suggests that endogenous oscillations occur in the presence of only one unstable equilibrium, whereas the coexistence of three equilibria is characterized by bi-stability, the central equilibrium being on the boundary which separates the basins of the two stable ones. However, a deeper analysis of the global dynamic properties of the model in the parameter ranges where three steady states exist, reveals the existence of an attracting limit cycle surrounding the three steady states, leading to a situation of multistability, with a rich and complex dynamic structure.     

Product cycles,innovation cycles,and regional economic change

The effects of technological change below the level of national and sectoral aggregations are frequently overlooked. This paper reviews the regional economic changes that result from technological change at both the firm level and in the individual plant. The related concepts of product cycles and innovation cycles provide a perspective for assessing regional and local effects. Government policies related to innovation are examined in the light of regional economic implications.     

Electronics and growth cycles in Singapore

With the help of spectral and structural time series analyses it is found that the demand for electronics in the USA goes through a cycle with a period of about four to five years. Because of the synchronized nature of the electronics market, the global demand for electronics is likely to follow a similar cycle. The electronics cycle is unlikely to be caused by a regular business cycle. The major cause of the electronics cycle appears to be a product cycle which results from the introduction of new products to the market. As a result countries like Singapore which depend heavily on electronics exports may face roller coaster rides, especially in their manufacturing growth. Product diversification is the best solution to the problem.     

Sectoral trends and cycles in Germany

We examine the comovements between the output indexes of three German sectors (manufacturing, mining, and agriculture) and the three corresponding sectoral stock market indexes. It is found that data with and without seasonal adjustment give mixed results on the long-run interaction between the sectoral indexes. Compared with data that are non-seasonally adjusted, the adjusted data offer weaker evidence on the cointegration relationship between a) the sectoral output indexes, b) sectoral stock indexes, and c) individual pairs of real and financial indexes. On short-run comovement, seasonally adjusted data offer stronger evidence on the presence of common synchronized and non-synchronized cyclical components. First version received: March 2000/Final version received: September 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  We would like to thank Michael Dooley, Juergen von Hagen, Kenneth Kletzer, Peter Kugler, Jacky So and two anonymous referees, as well as the participants of the Fifth Global Finance Conference in Mexico City, the seminars at the University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Munich, and University of Basel for their helpful comments and suggestions. This research was supported by CGES at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz faculty research funds.     

Politico-economic models and cycles

Studies are surveyed analyzing the mutual interaction of economy and polity in an empirically testable way. A wide variety of assumptions are made concerning the behaviour of economic and political decision-makers–in particular voters and government, as well as the economic and political sectors. Representative models are discussed considering steady state equilibria and political business cycles, and empirical results are presented for the U.S., the U.K. and Germany. Finally, the potential and prospects of politico–economic modelling are discussed.     

Housing cycles and efficiency

This paper has four objectives. First, a small model of the UK housing market is constructed, including equations for house prices, housing starts, construction costs and interest rates. The model is used in an analysis of housing market cycles, employing techniques developed for the analysis of general business cycles. Second, the model is used to consider housing market efficiency. Third, the model is extended to examine the relationship between house prices and property transactions. Finally, the role of monetary policy in the generation of housing cycles and stability is discussed.     

Business cycles and schooling

It has been suggested that recessions are the appropriate time for undertaking activities that promote long-term performance (such as re-organization, human capital investments, R&D). In this paper, we study the cyclical patterns of one such activity, namely schooling. In particular, we examine the cyclicality in the school enrollment rates of various age groups in the US. The overall pattern is countercyclical. In addition, schooling seems to respond negatively to the expected real interest rate. Overall, the results seem to support the view that variation in opportunity costs associated with business cycles plays a major role in schooling decisions.     

分权、外部性与边界效应

分权创造竞争激励的同时也带来了协调不足的问题。当经济活动存在正外部性,地方政府会策略性地减少辖区边界上的公共投资,产生区域发展中的边界效应。本文构建了存在外部性的政府投资模型来说明边界效应的产生机制,并从三方面给出经验证据:第一,利用县级经济统计和夜间灯光数据,在控制影响本地生产率的因素后,发现省份边界县的经济产出显著低于其他县,即存在区域经济发展的省界效应。第二,由省政府主导投资的交通设施存在显著的省界效应,这种效应并不存在于由中央政府主导投资的交通设施。第三,基于夜间灯光亮度的微观地理数据,利用撤县设区的政策实验和双重差分模型,发现地级市政府统筹权力的加强显著提高了原市辖区与被撤并县交界处的经济活动水平,即降低了区县边界效应。本文的结果表明,在保证地方政府竞争激励的前提下,建立政府间协调和利益共享机制,对于实现区域协调发展战略至关重要。     

Indeterminacy and cycles in two-sector discrete-time model

Summary. We consider a discrete-time two-sector Cobb-Douglas economy with positive sector specific external effects. We show that indeterminacy of steady states and cycles can easily arise with constant or decreasing social returns to scale, and very small market imperfections. This is in sharp contrast with most of the contributions in the literature in which increasing social returns are required to generate indeterminacy. Received: July 31, 2000; revised version: June 5, 2001     

Endogenous cycles and human capital

Existing evidence shows that human capital investment is countercyclical. In a dynamic model, I show that countercyclical investment in human capital arises as a result of a parametric combination relating to preferences and technologies. This countercyclical reaction is responsible for complex dynamics in the evolution of human capital, thus initiating a self-sustained sequence of events that generate endogenous cycles.     

Skills,sunspots and cycles

This paper explores the ability of a class of one-sector, multi-input models to generate indeterminate equilibrium paths, and endogenous fluctuations, without relying on factors’ hoarding. The model presents a novel theoretical economic mechanism that supports sunspot-driven expansions without requiring upward sloping labor demand schedules. Its distinctive characteristic is that the skill composition of aggregate labor demand drives expansionary i.i.d. demand shocks. Next, the model explains the labor market dynamics from the supply side, while endogenizing the capital productivity response to changes in the aggregate labor demand composition. Last but not least, it is worth to mention that the model presents an effective shock propagation mechanism that operates into the labor market and across labor market segments through the cross elasticities of equilibrium labor demand and supplies.      

Volatility,growth and cycles

The paper investigates the factors affecting the equilibrium level of output in a panel of European countries. Output depends on factor inputs and on the technology and the efficiency with which those factors are used. Efficiency may be driven by international conditions and institutional changes such as the Single Market Programme in Europe. The technology indicators used in this study depend upon research and development and also include the level of labour efficiency which is indexed on skills data. The level of the capital stock depends upon the user cost of capital, which may depend upon risk and hence on the volatility of the economy. Recent literature suggests that real exchange rate volatility is important in determining investment and therefore has an impact on equilibrium output. A link of this form is uncovered for the European economies. If policy can reduce these volatilities then it can also raise equilibrium output.

Agency costs and business cycles

Summary. This paper develops a model with endogenous agency costs that is otherwise quite similar to the canonical real business cycle model. The traditional assumption in the literature is that these agency costs arise in the production of investment goods. In contrast, this paper assumes that these costs are all encompassing in the sense that they arise in the production of aggregate output. The paper explores both the importance of the investment vs. output assumption for business cycle dynamics, and the conditions under which these agency models can deliver amplification and/or persistence. The paper has two principal conclusions. First, in terms of amplification and propagation, the output model performs worse than does the investment model. This arises because a variable distortion in the investment market has more of an impact than a comparable distortion in the output market. Second, in this model with optimal consumption choice by entrepreneurs, there is a clear tension between amplification and persistence. Received: December 30, 1997; revised version: April 1, 1998     

Asynchronized multiperiod commitments and cycles

We consider a game where agents can synchronize or stagger their decisions. We compare the outcomes of both timing patterns, and show that spillovers and strategic interactions are crucial for such a comparison. A typology used in industrial organization, distinguishing four cases (‘Fat-Cat’, ‘Top Dog’, Lean and Hungry’, ‘Puppy Dog’), allows us to compare the actions taken in the staggered variant and in the synchronized one. The staggered variant exhibits cycles and players are both better-off when there are strategic complementarities between them. A timing game is then set-up so as to endogenize the choice between the two variants we study.Two examples are developed: (i) Bertrand competition and (ii) a wage setting game when there are two monopoly unions in two interrelated firms. We show that the staggering of price decisions generates counter-cyclical mark-ups in the first example, and the staggering of wage decisions generates cycling output in the industry in the second example.     

Innovation, cycles and growth

The purpose of this paper is to present a model of growth with endogenous fluctuations. The main feature of our model is that it throws light on the relationships between long waves and business cycles in the economy. The driving forces in the model work in this way: endogenous R&D investment creates new cumulative knowledge. When this knowledge reaches a threshold H*, radical innovations occur which generate productivity growth via the substitution of old capital with new capital. These disruptive events appear recurrently, generating long waves and revitalizing the growth process. Short-term cycles in the model come from the interactions between these innovation-driven transformations and certain prey-predator mechanisms that involve the labor market. We find that our model presents excellent properties: the model generates endogenous cyclical growth as a disequilibrium process; persistent and irregular short cycles appear interwoven with the long waves; and there is a strong significant interaction between both kinds of fluctuations.