The cyclical behavior of hours worked, wages, and consumption does not conform with the prediction of the representative agent with standard preferences. The residual in the intra-temporal first-order condition for commodity consumption and leisure is often viewed as a failure of labor-market clearing. We show that a simple heterogeneous-agent economy with incomplete markets and indivisible labor generates an aggregation error that looks much like the preference residual in the data. Our results caution against viewing the preference residual as a failure of labor-market clearing or a fundamental driving force of business cycles.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Macroeconomics with number
0402024.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please 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.:
V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2002.
"Business cycle accounting,"
Working Papers
625, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Other versions:
V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2006.
"Business cycle accounting,"
Staff Report
328, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
[Downloadable!]
V.V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen McGrattan, 2004.
"Business Cycle Accounting,"
NBER Working Papers
10351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2007.
"Business Cycle Accounting,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 781-836, 05.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please 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.)