A. Craig Burnside

Labor Hoarding and the Business Cycle

This paper investigates the sensitivity of Solow residual based measures of technology shocks to labor hoarding behavior. Using a structural model of labor hoarding and the identifying restriction that innovations to technology shocks are orthogonal to innovations in government consumption, we estimate the fraction of the variability of the Solow residual that is due to technology shocks. Our results support the view that a significant proportion of movements in the Solow residual are artifacts of labor hoarding behavior. Specifically, we estimate that the variance of innovations to technology is roughly 50 percent less than that implied by standard real business cycle models. In addition, our results suggest that existing real business cycle studies substantially overstate the extent to which technology shocks account for the variability of postwar aggregate U.S. output.

Understanding Booms and Busts in Housing Markets

Some booms in housing prices are followed by busts. Others are not. It is generally difficult to find observable fundamentals that are useful for predicting whether a boom will turn into a bust or not. We develop a model consistent with these observations. Agents have heterogeneous expectations about long-run fundamentals but change their views because of “social dynamics.” Agents with tighter priors are more likely to convert others to their beliefs. Boom-bust episodes typically occur when skeptical agents happen to be correct. The booms that are not followed by busts typically occur when optimistic agents happen to be correct.

On the Fiscal Implications of Twin Crises

This paper explores the implications of different strategies for financing the fiscal cost of twin crises for inflation and depreciation rates. We use a first-generation type model of speculative attacks which has four key features: (i) the crisis is triggered by prospective deficits, (ii) there exists outstanding non-indexed government debt issued prior to the crises; (iii) a portion of the governments liabilities are not indexed to inflation; and (iv) there are nontradable goods and costs of distributing tradable goods, so that purchasing power parity does not hold. We show that the model can account for the high rates of devaluation and moderate rates of inflation often observed in the wake of currency crises. We use our model and the data to interpret the recent currency crises in Mexico and Korea. Our analysis suggest that the Mexican government is likely to pay for the bulk of the fiscal costs of its crisis through seignorage revenues. In contrast, the Korean government is likely to rely more on a combination of implicit and explicit fiscal reforms.