IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfwp/2009-24.html

The role of capital service-life in a model with heterogenous labor and vintage capital

Author

Listed:
  • Milton H. Marquis
  • Wuttipan Tantivong
  • Bharat Trehan

Abstract

We examine how the economy responds to both disembodied and embodied technology shocks in a model with vintage capital. We focus on what happens when there is a change in the number of vintages of capital that are in use at any one time and on what happens when there is a change in the persistence of the shocks hitting the economy. The data suggest that these kinds of changes took place in the U.S. economy in the 1990s, when the pace of embodied technical progress appears to have accelerated. We find that embodied technology shocks lead to greater variability (of output, investment and labor allocations) than disembodied shocks of the same size. On the other hand, a decrease in the number of vintages in use at any time (such as is likely to occur when the pace of technical progress accelerates) tends to reduce the volatility of output and also to differentiate the initial response of the economy to the two shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Milton H. Marquis & Wuttipan Tantivong & Bharat Trehan, 2009. "The role of capital service-life in a model with heterogenous labor and vintage capital," Working Paper Series 2009-24, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2009-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/papers/2009/wp09-24bk.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Christiano, Lawrence J, 2002. "Solving Dynamic Equilibrium Models by a Method of Undetermined Coefficients," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 20(1-2), pages 21-55, October.
    3. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 2000. "The role of investment-specific technological change in the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 91-115, January.
    4. Jason G. Cummins & Giovanni L. Violante, 2002. "Investment-Specific Technical Change in the US (1947-2000): Measurement and Macroeconomic Consequences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), pages 243-284, April.
    5. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat, 2008. "On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1390-1406, December.
    6. Boyan Jovanovic, 1998. "Vintage Capital and Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(2), pages 497-530, April.
    7. Per Krusell & Lee E. Ohanian & JosÈ-Victor RÌos-Rull & Giovanni L. Violante, 2000. "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1029-1054, September.
    8. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 1997. "Long-Run Implications of Investment-Specific Technological Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 342-362, June.
    9. Milton H. Marquis & Bharat Trehan, 2007. "Productivity shocks in a model with vintage capital and heterogeneous labor," Working Paper Series 2007-06, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    10. Simon Gilchrist & John C. Williams, 2000. "Putty-Clay and Investment: A Business Cycle Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 928-960, October.
    11. Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2002. "Technology shocks matter," Working Paper Series WP-02-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    12. John M. Abowd & Paul A. Lengermann & Kevin L. McKinney, 2002. "The Measurement of Human Capital in the U.S. Economy," Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Technical Papers 2002-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau, revised Mar 2003.
    13. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1980. "Equilibrium in a Pure Currency Economy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(2), pages 203-220, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Milton H. Marquis & Bharat Trehan, 2007. "Productivity shocks in a model with vintage capital and heterogeneous labor," Working Paper Series 2007-06, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat & Tantivong, Wuttipan, 2014. "The wage premium puzzle and the quality of human capital," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 100-110.
    3. Sergio Rebelo, 2005. "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Working Papers 11401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Peter Ireland & Scott Schuh, 2008. "Productivity and U.S. Macroeconomic Performance: Interpreting the Past and Predicting the Future with a Two-Sector Real Business Cycle Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 473-492, July.
    5. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Juan F. Rubio-Ramirez, 2007. "On the solution of the growth model with investment-specific technological change," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(8), pages 549-553.
    6. Diego Comin & Mark Gertler, 2006. "Medium-Term Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 523-551, June.
    7. Violante, Giovanni & Hornstein, Andreas, 2002. "Vintage Capital as an Origin of Inequalities," CEPR Discussion Papers 3596, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Francois Gourio, 2005. "Operating Leverage, Stock Market Cyclicality, and the Cross-Section of Returns," 2005 Meeting Papers 66, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Ricardo Azevedo Araujo & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2008. "Investment-Specific Technological Change, Investment Sectoral Allocation and Human Capital Accumulation in a Model of Export-Led Growth," Anais do XXXVI Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 36th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 200807211332520, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    10. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell & Giovanni L. Violante, 2002. "Vintage capital as an origin of inequalities," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue nov.
    11. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell & Giovanni L. Violante, 2007. "Technology—Policy Interaction in Frictional Labour-Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(4), pages 1089-1124.
    12. Peter N. Ireland, 2009. "On the Welfare Cost of Inflation and the Recent Behavior of Money Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1040-1052, June.
    13. Boyan Jovanovic, 2009. "When should firms invest in old capital?," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(1), pages 107-123, March.
    14. Gregory Casey & Ryo Horii, 2019. "A Multi-factor Uzawa Growth Theorem and Endogenous Capital-Augmenting Technological Change," ISER Discussion Paper 1051, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    15. Stuart J. Fowler & Bichaka Fayissa, 2007. "Public Capital Spending Shocks and the Price of Investment: Evidence from a Panel of Countries," Working Papers 200702, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    16. Díaz Antonia & Puch Luis A., 2019. "Investment, technological progress and energy efficiency," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-28, June.
    17. Tang, Le & Jefferson, Gary, 2024. "A DSGE model of energy efficiency with vintage capital in Chinese industry," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    18. Burkhard Heer & Alfred Maussner & Bernd Suessmuth, 2018. "Cyclical Asset Returns in the Consumption and Investment Goods Sector," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 28, pages 51-70, April.
    19. Justiniano, Alejandro & Primiceri, Giorgio E. & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2010. "Investment shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 132-145, March.
    20. Guido Cozzi & Giammario Impullitti, 2010. "Government Spending Composition, Technical Change, and Wage Inequality," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(6), pages 1325-1358, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2009-24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.