Bubbles over the U.S. business cycle: A macroeconometric approach

This paper builds a New Keynesian model with financial frictions and monetary and fiscal rules for the United States. We incorporate a rational bubble process in the (relative) price of capital. Our results show that bubbles account for a significant amount of variance in key macroeconomic variables and are as important as investment-specific shocks in explaining total variation. Further, we show that a bursting bubble creates large and long-lasting real effects. In particular, we find large effects on government debt that persist for several years.