Measures of technology and the business cycle

We analyze the technology shocks identified by two different structural VAR models and compare them with classical and refined Solow residuals. The measures of technology are reasonably highly correlated. Alternative identifying restrictions in the VARs, however, have different theoretical as well as empirical consequences for the technology shocks. King & al.'s (1991) model and the classical Solow residual capture a mixture of technology and labor supply shocks, whereas the technology shocks from Galf's model and the refined Solow residuals arc robust to the latter phenomenon. Moreover, we find that the two robust measures of technology arc negatively correlated with hours worked.