Abstract

We argue that the network of investment production and purchases across sectors is an important propagation mechanism for understanding business cycles. Empirically, we show that the majority of investment goods are produced by a few “investment hubs,” which are more cyclical than other sectors. We embed this investment network into a multisector business cycle model and show that sector-specific shocks to the investment hubs and their key suppliers have large effects on aggregate employment and drive down labor productivity. Quantitatively, we find that sector-specific shocks to hubs and their suppliers account for an increasing share of aggregate fluctuations over time, generating the declining cyclicality of labor productivity and other changes in business cycle patterns since the 1980s.

中文翻译：

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投资网络、行业联动和不断变化的美国商业周期*

摘要

我们认为，跨部门的投资生产和购买网络是理解商业周期的重要传播机制。根据经验，我们表明大多数投资商品是由少数“投资中心”生产的，这些“投资中心”比其他行业更具周期性。我们将这个投资网络嵌入到多部门商业周期模型中，并表明对投资中心及其主要供应商的特定部门冲击对总就业有很大影响，并降低了劳动生产率。从数量上看，我们发现，随着时间的推移，对枢纽及其供应商的特定行业冲击在总体波动中所占的份额越来越大，导致劳动生产率的周期性下降以及自 1980 年代以来商业周期模式的其他变化。