Speculation-driven Business Cycles

Saki Bigio and Eduardo Zilberman

No 161, Working Papers from Peruvian Economic Association

Abstract: Speculation, in the spirit of Harrison and Kreps (1978), is introduced into a standard real business cycle model. Investors (speculators) hold heterogeneous beliefs about firm growth. Firm ownership, and thus, the firm’s discount factor varies with waves of optimism and leverage. These waves ripple into firm investments in hours. The firm’s discount factor links the equity premium and labor volatility puzzles. We obtain an upper bound to the amplification that can be generated by speculation for any model of beliefs—a factor of 1.5. A calibration based on diagnostic beliefs amplifies hours volatility by a factor of 1.15 and produces a bubble component of 20 percent.

JEL-codes: D84 E32 E44 E71 G41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-mac
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Working Paper: Speculation-Driven Business Cycles (2020)
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