CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Research Papers in Economics Cahier de recherche/Working Paper 07-12 Search Frictions in Physical Capital Markets as a Propagation Mechanism André Kurmann Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau Mai/May 2007 Kurmann: CIRPÉE and Université du Québec à Montréal, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 8888, Downtown Station, Montréal (QC) Canada H3C 3P8
[email protected] Petrosky-Nadeau: CIRPÉE and Université du Québec à Montréal, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 8888, Downtown Station, Montréal (QC) Canada H3C 3P8
[email protected] We thank Charles Carlstrom, Alain Delacroix, Beverly Lapham and Etienne Wasmer for helpful advice. Previous versions have been presented at HEC Montréal, the Bank of Canada, Paris I, the Swiss National Bank, HEC Lausanne, the CIRPÉE conference on the Frontiers of Macroeconomics, the Study Center Gerzensee, Toulouse, Laval as well as at annual meetings of the Canadian Economic Association, the Society of Economic Dynamics, the European Economic Association and the CMSG. We thank the participants for their comments. Financial support from FQRSC, SSHRC (Kurmann) and FQRSC, PAFARC- UQAM (Petrosky-Nadeau) is gratefully acknowledged. Abstract: We build a Dynamic General Equilibrium model with search frictions for the allocation of physical capital and investigate its implications for the business cycle. While the model is in principle capable of generating substantial internal propagation to small exogenous shocks, the quantitative effects are modest once we calibrate the model to fit firm-level capital flows. We then extend the model with credit market frictions that lead to countercyclical default and countercyclical risk premia as in the data.