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

_IMF Working Papers, February 1, 2006_

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: Ayhan Kose, William Blankenau
- Published: February 1, 2006
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781451863062.001

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### Overview and Research Question
- Study objective: Examine stylized business cycle properties of household (home) production in four industrialized countries: Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan.
- Methodology: Employ a dynamic small open economy business cycle model that incorporates a household production sector to generate simulated data on:
  - home output,
  - hours worked in the home sector,
  - hours spent on leisure.

### Key Findings
- Volatility and correlations:
  - Home output is more volatile than market output in each country.
  - Home sector hours are about as volatile as market sector hours.
  - Leisure is the least volatile series in each country.
  - Leisure hours and home hours are countercyclical in all countries.
  - Home output is not highly correlated with market output.
- Persistence and cross-country patterns:
  - Home sector variables are generally less persistent than market variables.
  - Cross-country correlations related to home production tend to be lower than those related to market production.
- Cross-country similarity:
  - Despite known structural differences in labor markets across the four countries, the cyclical features of home sector variables are similar across the countries considered.

### Data, Scope, and Subject Tags
- Countries analyzed: Canada, the United States, Germany, Japan.
- Subjects: Business cycles, Consumption, Exports, Labor markets, Productivity.
- Keywords: market sector, standard deviation, time series, WP.

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/how-different-is-the-cyclical-behavior-of-home-production-across-countries-18805_