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The Spirit of Capitalism and Expectation Driven Business Cycles

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  • Lilia Karnizova

    (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa)

Abstract

While news shocks are believed to be instrumental in explaining business cycles, many existing models fail to predict an economic boom in consumption, investment, employment, output and the stock market in response to good news about future productivity. This paper proposes and evaluates a model with the intrinsic desire for wealth accumulation, or ‘the spirit of capitalism’ hypothesis, which generates the aforementioned responses. Restrictions for the existence of expectation driven business cycles are derived analytically. The restrictions are confirmed by an estimated version of the model. The proposed preference specification is supported with additional empirical evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Lilia Karnizova, 2008. "The Spirit of Capitalism and Expectation Driven Business Cycles," Working Papers 0804E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ott:wpaper:0804e
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Spirit of Capitalism; News Shocks; Business Cycles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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