Aggregation and the Microfoundations of Dynamic Macroeconomics

Front Cover
Clarendon Press, 1997 - Business & Economics - 235 pages
Through careful methodological analysis, this book argues that modern macroeconomics has completely overlooked the aggregate nature of the data. In Part I, the authors test and reject the homogeneity assumption using disaggregate data. In Part II, they demonstrate that apart from random flukes, cointegration unidirectional Granger causality and restrictions on parameters do not survive aggregation when heterogeneity is introduced. They conclude that the claim that modern macroeconomics has solid microfoundations is unwarranted. However, some important theory-based models that do not fit aggregate data well in their representative-agent version can be reconciled with aggregate data by introducing heterogeneity.
 

Contents

1
4
How Many Common Shocks?
19
The Regional Model
43
Aggregating the Common Components
53
Reformulation of Standard RepresentativeAgent Models
67
The Disaggregated Model
79
The Aggregate Model
105
The Rank of the Aggregate Vector
116
An Extension of the Alternative Principle
130
Granger Causality
138
Permanent Income and the Error Correction Mechanism
159
Disaggregating the Business Cycle
189
Conclusions
202
References
225
Index
233
116
234

Cointegration
122

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