实际周期学派是新古典学派的一部分,所以他们对经济周期的解释是很相似的。他们都认为经济周期是“unexpected shocks”的产物;区别在于,实际周期学派认为经济周期的shock是技术shock,是供给推动的,而新古典学派另有人认为shock是需求推动的,包括货币政策刺激,财政政策刺激、time to build 或者 irreversible investment等等。建议参考Kevin Hoover在econlib上的这段文字,下面是节选,全文连接在:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/NewClassicalMacroeconomics.html
Business Cycles
Business cycles pose a special challenge for new classical economists: How are large fluctuations in output compatible with the two fundamental tenets of their doctrine?
Here is how. The economy, they believe, is often buffeted by unexpected shocks. Shocks to aggregate demand are typically unanticipated changes in monetary or
fiscal policy. Shocks to aggregate supply are typically changes in
productivitythat may result, for example, from transient changes to technology,prices of raw materials, or the organization of production. Ideally,firms would choose to produce more and to pay their workers more when the economy has been hit by favorable shocks and less when hit by unfavorable shocks. Similarly, workers would be willing to work more when productivity and wage rates are higher and to take more leisure when their rewards are lower. For both, the rule is “make hay while the sun shines.”
Employment,like output, would clearly rise with favorable shocks and fall with unfavorable shocks. But having rejected the very notion of involuntary unemployment, why do new classicals think that the unemployment rate would fall in the boom and rise in the slump? When a worker is laid off, he must seek a new job. He weighs the value of taking a lower-paid job that might be easily available (a machinist might become a day laborer) against the value of a better-paid, more suitable job that is harder to find. The new classicals do not argue that the unemployed job searcher is happy with his choice: being laid off was a bad draw, and,like everyone, he prefers good luck to bad. Rather, they argue that the worker chooses what he regards as the best available option, even when the options are poor. To remain unemployed (and to show up in the unemployment statistics) is something that he chooses based on his judgment that the benefits of the search outweigh the costs; this is not an exception to the rule that amount supplied equals amountdemanded.
The fact that the economy experiences good and bad shocks is not enough to explain business cycles. An adequate theory must account for persistence—the fact that business cycles typically display long runs of good times followed by shorter, but still significant, runs of bad times. Those new classicals who regard demand shocks as dominant argue that the shocks are propagated slowly. It is always costly to adjust production levels quickly. Similarly, when higher production requires new capital, it takes time to build it up. And when lower production renders existing capital redundant, it takes time to wear it out or use it up. New classicals of the “real-business-cycle school” (led by
edward prescott and
finn kydland,corecipients of the 2004 Nobel Prize) regard changes in productivity as the driving force in business cycles. Because changes in technology may also come in waves, runs of favorable or unfavorable productivity (or technology) shocks may account for some of the persistence characteristic of business cycles.