Schumpeterian Foundations of Real Business Cycles

Technology shocks are at the core of real business cycle models. Although tra- ditionaly described as exogenous, technology shocks can be the result of the endoge- nous decisions by economic agents under uncertainty. To demostrate it, in this paper I develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that incorporates Schum- peterian endogenous growth features that affect the convergence to the steady-state. In this model, technology advances are due to the introduction of vertical innovations by entrepreneurs who try to become monopolists in different economic sectors. En- trepreneurs? ventures are ?nanced by banks. The model is solved and estimated by bayesian methods for the United States economy to compute the value of some of its structural parameters. Results show that for a country close to the technology fron- tier, the presented innovation mechanism is roughly equivalent in terms of volatilies, correlations and impulse responses to technology shocks in real business cycle mod- els. Therefore, the behavior of the productivity can be due not only to technology considerations but also to ?nancial and entrepreneurial reasons.