Publication: Essays in macroeconomics
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Publication date
2015-11
Defense date
2016-01-22
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Abstract
The thesis consists of three chapters in form of separate papers. Two of the chapters
focus on family labor supply and its effects on the business cycle behavior of hours worked. The
third chapter analyses the sources of economic growth in Belarus.
The first chapter, Real Business Cycles in Model Economies with a Two-Person Household, studies
model economies with a representative two-person household. The standard RBC model cannot
replicate the negative correlation of hours with aggregate labor productivity which we observe in
the U.S. data (-0.18). I show that extending the standard model to include a two-person representative
household, home production and extensive margin decision on labor market participation
can generate this negative correlation.
In the second chapter, Accounting for Labor Productivity Puzzle, I show that an increase in the
share of two-earner households in the U.S. and corresponding changes in labor supply behavior have
implications for aggregate business cycles. In particular, it may explain why in the recent decades
aggregate labor productivity in the U.S. became countercyclical (labor productivity puzzle). I build
a model with heterogeneous one- and two-earner households and aggregate technology shocks, and
calibrate it to the current U.S. data. I impose the household structure change in the model and
show that the behavior of labor productivity changes from procyclical to countercyclical.
The third chapter, Belarusian Economic Growth Decomposition, written in co-authorship with
Dzmitry Kruk, investigates the sources of the extraordinary growth Belarus experienced in 2000’s.
Belarus stands out from the rest of post-Soviet transitional countries. The economic reforms in
the country were limited, and Belarusian economy does not rely on natural resource rents. We
carefully reconstruct the capital series for Belarus and perform the growth accounting. We find
that Belarus mainly benefited from extensive growth through capital accumulation which quickly
depleted its potential.
Description
Tesis por compendio de publicaciones
Keywords
Modelo económico, Ciclos económicos, Crecimiento económico, Productividad