Intangible investments and international business cycles

International Economics and Economic Policy - Tập 14 - Trang 211-219 - 2016
Guido Baldi1,2, André Bodmer1
1Department of Economics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
2German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Berlin, Germany

Tóm tắt

Intangible capital is an increasingly important factor of production in advanced economies. Governments in Europe and elsewhere promote investment in intangible assets. However, the potential role of intangibles for business cycles and the international transmission of shocks is not well understood. In this paper, we investigate the international business cycle effects of intangible capital. To this aim, we build an otherwise standard two-country real business cycle model augmented by a production sector for intangibles and allow for the non-rivalrous use of intangible capital in the production of final output goods and new intangibles. We find that a model including intangibles is associated with international co-movement of tangible investment, which is a feature observed in the data that many models fail to produce.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Ambler S, Cardia E, Zimmermann C (2004) International business cycles: what are the facts? J Monet Econ 51(2):257–276 Backus DK, Kehoe PJ, Kydland FE (1992) International real business cycles. J Polit Econ 100(4):745–75 Baxter M, Farr DD (2005) Variable capital utilization and international business cycles. J Int Econ 65(2):335–347 Canova F, Ubide AJ (1998) International business cycles, financial markets and household production. J Econ Dyn Control 22(4):545–572 Corrado C, Haskel J, Iommi M, Jona-Lasinio C (2013) Innovation and intangible investment in Europe, Japan and the United States. Oxf Rev Econ Policy 29(2):261–286 Corsetti G, Dedola L, Leduc S (2014) The international dimension of productivity and demand shocks in the US economy. J Eur Econ Assoc 12(1):153–176 Greenwood J, Hercowitz Z, Huffman GW (1988) Investment, capacity utilization, and the real business cycle. Am Econ Rev 78(3):402–17 Heathcote J, Perri F (2002) Financial autarky and international business cycles. J Monet Econ 49(3):601–627 Johri A, Letendre M-A, Luo D (2011) Organizational capital and the international co-movement of investment. J Macroecon 33(4):511–523 Kehoe PJ, Perri F (2002) International business cycles with endogenous incomplete markets. Econometrica 70(3):907–928 McGrattan ER, Prescott EC (2012) The labor productivity puzzle. Government policies and the delayed economic recovery McGrattan ER, Prescott EC (2014) A reassessment of real business cycle theory. Am Econ Rev 104(5):177–82 Raffo A (2010) Technology shocks: novel implications for international business cycles. International Finance Discussion Papers no. 992, Federal Reserve System (U.S.)