Commodity Price Shocks and the Business Cycle: Structural Evidence for the U.S
Abstract
This paper develops a 9-dimensional SVAR to investigate the sources of the U.S. business cycle. We extend the standard set of identified shocks to include unexpected changes in commodity prices. Our main result is that commodity price shocks are a very important driving force of macroeconomic fluctuations, second only to investment-specific technology shocks. In particular, we find that commodity price shocks explain a large share of cyclical movements in inflation. Neutral technology shocks and monetary policy shocks seem less relevant at business cycle frequencies. The impulse response dynamics provide support for medium-scale DSGE models, but not for strong price rigidities.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel in its series Working papers with number 2011/05.Length:
Date of creation: 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2011/05
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Peter-Merian-Weg 6, Postfach, CH-4002 Basel
Web page: http://wwz.unibas.ch
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: business cycles; commodity price shocks; structural VAR;Other versions of this item:
- Matthias Gubler & Matthias S. Hertweck, 2013. "Commodity Price Shocks and the Business Cycle: Structural Evidence for the U.S," Working Papers 2013-05, Swiss National Bank.
- Matthias Gubler & Matthias S. Hertweck, 2011. "Commodity Price Shocks and the Business Cycle: Structural Evidence for the U.S," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2011-03, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
- C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models
- E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
- E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
- Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2011-06-04 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2011-06-04 (Business Economics)
- NEP-MAC-2011-06-04 (Macroeconomics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Jordi Galí & Pau Rabanal, 2004.
"Technology Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations: How Well Does the RBC Model Fit Postwar U.S. Data?,"
IMF Working Papers
04/234, International Monetary Fund.
- Jordi Gali & Pau Rabanal, 2004. "Technology Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations: How Well Does the RBS Model Fit Postwar U.S. Data?," NBER Working Papers 10636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Galí, Jordi & Rabanal, Pau, 2004. "Technology Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations: How Well Does the RBC Model Fit Post-War US Data?," CEPR Discussion Papers 4522, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Di Pace, F. & Faccini, R., 2012.
"Deep habits and the cyclical behaviour of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies,"
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control,
Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 183-200.
- di Pace, Federico & Faccini, Renato, 2010. "Deep habits and the cyclical behaviour of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies," Bank of England working papers 391, Bank of England.
- Ordóñez, Javier & Sala, Hector & Silva, José I., 2010.
"Oil Price Shocks and Labor Market Fluctuations,"
IZA Discussion Papers
5096, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Javier Ordóñez & Hector Sala & José I. Silva, 2011. "Oil Price Shocks and Labor Market Fluctuations," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 89-118.
- Javier Ordóñez & Hector Sala & José I. Silva, 2010. "Oil price shocks and labor market fluctuations," Working Papers wpdea1005, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
- Reinout De Bock, 2007. "Investment-Specific Technology Shocks and Labor Market Frictions," Working Paper Research 108, National Bank of Belgium.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Jun Nagayasu, 2013. "A dynamic factor approach to domestic capital mobility," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 685-700, April.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2011/05For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (WWZ).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

