Matheus Albergaria de Magalhães

Equilíbrio e ciclos

The research agenda related to Real-Business-Cycle models (RBC) has shown a remarkable growth since its beginning, in the eighties. The first models of this kind departed from simple economies without imperfections and tried to explain short-run macroeconomic movements (cycles) from Walrasian general-equilibrium settings. Nowadays, RBC models are widely used in Macroeconomics, with a special emphasis on the quantitative aspects of economic fluctuations. The main goal of this paper is to provide a survey of the first stage of the RBC research agenda, since there is not a systematic survey of this literature available in Portuguese. Although there are several controversial results related to RBC models, its main contribution seems to be methodological, since these models had a profound impact on current macroeconomic modeling.

Assimetria e concentração: um estudo empírico da distribuição de investimentos previstos para o Estado do Espírito Santo, 2009-2014

This paper aims to provide a detailed statistical descriptive analysis for the distribution of regional investments. In doing so, it used a novel dataset related to planned investment projects for Espirito Santos municipalities during the 2009-2014 period. Additionally, we present results related to these investment values in order to test the empirical validity of Zipfs Law for the distribution under analysis. These results are important for the identification of empirical patterns related to the spatial distribution of investment projects, and may be useful for the formulation and implementation of public policies aimed at developing specific localities.

ON THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY SHOCKS OVER LABOR INPUT AT BUSINESS-CYCLE FREQUENCIES: AN EMPIRICAL NOTE

In the last years, there has been a heated debate over the empirical adequacy of Real-Business-Cycle (RBC) models (GALI, 1999; CHRISTIANO; EICHENBAUM; VIGFUSSON, 2003; FRANCIS; RAMEY, 2005). In this empirical note, we check the robustness of some of the main results obtained in this strand of the literature. Our contribution is twofold: first, we provide robust results by using different data sources; second, we show that the results related to labor input’s dynamic pattern over business-cycle horizons are sensitive to the way labor input is modelled. The results obtained favor specifications where labor input is modelled as growth rates. These results may help distinguishing the most desirable empirical specifications to be employed over the debate in the future.

RESÍDUOS DE SOLOW INDUSTRIAIS: UM ESTUDO EMPÍRICO PARA O BRASIL

In this paper, we study the cyclical properties of total-factor-productivity (TFP) rates (“Solow residuals”) for the Brazilian industry. In doing so, we check if methodological differences related to the construction of TFP measures can affect their statistical properties. The results obtained show that such properties are sensitive to the methodology employed. In particular, in the case of our sample, we obtain three main results: (i) corrected productivity measures are less correlated with industrial production measures when compared to non-corrected measures; (ii) corrected measures, where correction is done through the use of industrial energy consumption, are less volatile than industrial production measures, while the opposite is true for corrected measures where correction is done through capacity utilization rates; (iii) corrected measures where correction is made through the use of capacity utilization rates are the only measures which obey the Hall-Evans Invariance Property and they can be characterized as exogenous. These results show the importance of methodological issues related to the construction of productivity measures as well as the importance of capacity utilization rates in the case of business-cycle horizons.