How Different Is the Cyclical Behavior of Home Production Across Countries?

February 1, 2006

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Format: Chicago

Ayhan Kose, and William Blankenau. How Different Is the Cyclical Behavior of Home Production Across Countries?, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2006) accessed September 26, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

This paper studies stylized business cycle properties of household production in four industrialized countries (Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan). We employ a dynamic small open economy business cycle model that incorporates a household production sector. We use the model to generate data on home output, hours worked in the home sector, and hours spent on leisure. We find that in each country, home output is more volatile than market output while home sector hours are about as volatile as those in the market sector. In each country, leisure is the least volatile series. Leisure hours and home hours are countercyclical in all countries, and home output is not highly correlated with market output. Home sector variables are generally less persistent than market variables, and cross-country correlations related to home production tend to be lower than those related to market production. These findings demonstrate that despite some well-known structural differences in labor markets, the cyclical features of home sector variables are similar across the countries we consider.

Subject: Business cycles, Consumption, Exports, Labor markets, Productivity

Keywords: Market sector, Standard deviation, Time series, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

32
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2006/046
Stock No:

WPIEA2006046
ISBN:

9781451863062
ISSN:

1018-5941

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