Testing the Technology Interpretation of News Shocks

Bernd Lucke (1)

1 Economics

This paper presents further evidence on the hypothesis of news driven business cycles. I use a structural VECM approach to identify news shocks as in Beaudry and Lucke (2010). I document three facts: First, news shocks identified by BL are Granger-causal for US patent data. Second, BL's analysis applied to German macro data reveals very similar patterns: Activity is largely driven by news and news shocks explain a sizable and increasing share of TFP variance at long horizons. Third, German news shocks are Granger-causal for German patent data and the pattern is, again, very similar to the US. Since patent data in the US and Germany are almost uncorrelated, the similarity is striking and strongly suggests a technology interpretation of news shocks.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Bernd Lucke. Testing the Technology Interpretation of News Shocks. Applied Economics, 2011, 45 (01), pp.1-13. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2011.566209⟩. ⟨hal-00732114⟩