Why Does Household Investment Lead Business Investment Over the Business Cycle?
Household investment leads non-residential business fixed investment
over the U.S. business cycle. Because real business cycle (RBC) theory
has not been able to account for this observation, it represents a potent
challenge to the view that transitory productivity disturbances are the main
source of aggregate fluctuations. This paper reconciles RBC theory with
the investment dynamics, by extending the traditional home production
model to make household capital complementary with business capital and
labor in market production. Empirical evidence suggesting that household
capital is a complementary input in market production is also presented.