Working Paper Series,
Trade Union Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Empirical evidence on the cyclical behavior of technology shocks, or the relative importance of technology shocks versus other structural shocks as sources of fluctuations, hinges crucially on the identification of technological changes. In this paper, we study different measures of technology in order to find out (i) to what extent they capture the same underlying phenomenon and (ii) whether the implications for macroeconomic theory vary between approaches. Several variations of the production function approach and structural VAR models are investigated: the classic Solow residual, the refined Solow residuals of Burnside et al (1995) and Basu and Kimball (1997), large cointegrated VAR models as in King et al (1991) and a small VAR in first differences à la Galí (1999). It turns out that the different measures of technological change are reasonably coherent when applied to US data. However, they are often insignificantly related in the case of Sweden. Furthermore, our results do not support the hypothesis that business cycle fluctuations are primarily drive by changes in technology.

Keywords: Technology shocks; Production function approach; Structural VAR models

JEL-codes: C32; D24; E32

47 pages, December 28, 2001

Full text files

WP174.pdf  

Download statistics

• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Sune Karlsson ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:11:11.