Animal spirits, fundamental factors and business cycle fluctuations

Stephane Dees and Srečko Zimic

Journal of Macroeconomics, 2019, vol. 61, issue C, -

Abstract: We explore empirically the role of noisy information in cyclical developments to separate fluctuations due to genuine changes in fundamentals from those driven by temporary animal spirits (or noise shocks). Exploiting the fact that the econometrician has a richer dataset in some dimensions than the consumers, we use a novel identification scheme in a structural VAR framework and show that noise shocks are important drivers of business cycle fluctuations. In particular, noise shocks play a large role in consumption expenditures showing how false perceptions about future fundamentals influence consumer behaviors.

Keywords: Technology shocks; Noise shocks; Animal spirits; Business Cycles; Identification; Structural Vector Autoregression; Kalman Filter; Signal-extraction problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Animal spirits, fundamental factors and business cycle fluctuations (2019)
Working Paper: Animal spirits, fundamental factors and business cycle fluctuations (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:61:y:2019:i:c:14

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2019.103123

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