Essays on technology, fiscal policy, and the business cycle

This dissertation empirically investigates macroeconomic fluctuations.;In the first chapter, I study nontechnology shocks. It is popular to identify technology shocks as shocks permanently affecting labor productivity in SVAR. However it potentially misidentifies nontechnology shocks permanently affecting capital-labor ratio as technology shocks. I show that the nontechnology permanent shocks bring nonstationarity of nominal investment-output ratio and are identified by the restriction that those permanently affect real investment-output ratio. My method suggests that the only country with significant nontechnology permanent shocks within the G-7 countries is Japan. When nontechnology permanent shocks are identified for Japan, the response of hours worked to technology improvement becomes insignificant. Furthermore technology shocks lose the dominant role in Japan's lost decade.;In the second chapter, I measure U.S. technology in 1891-2006 with a series of Solow residuals, which are purified from the effects of varying utilization of capital and labor, nonconstant scales, and imperfect competition and find the following three facts. First, when technology improves, hours worked change little on impact in the pre-W.W.II period and fall in the post-W.W.II period. Second, technology regressed by 4.8 percent in the Great Depression period, which is less than one-third of 15.5 percent fall in the standard Solow residuals series. Third, the average growth rate of technology in 1929-1941 was highest in U.S. history.;In the third chapter, I revisit pre-World War I U.K. Wartime Economy. Wartime rises in the interest rate have been interpreted as supporting a theoretical effect of a government goods purchases shock, since wars accompany large increases in military goods purchase. However, I find that watime U.K. production fell and show that the neoclassical model generates only one of the twos. A positive shock to government employment, generated by wartime increases in military employment, leads only to a fall in production. When I give the model the shocks corresponding to average behavior of military spending and military employment across war episodes, the model generates falls in production and the interest rate. I argue that the falls in production were due to military employment and the rises in interest rate were due to risk premium.