Hospodářské cykly, nová klasická makroekonomie a možnosti stabilizační politiky
BUSINESS CYCLES, NEW CLASSICAL MACROECONOMICS AND THE POSSIBILITIES FOR STABILIZATION POLICIES

Summary/Abstract: he modern neoclassical theory of business cycles is one of the most influential economic theories of today, with many important and interesting implications for the area of planning and implementing economic policy. Its fundamentals come from the scientific work of Robert E. Lucas, Jr. and others (Robert J. Barro, Thomas J. Sargent, Neil Wal-lace, Edward C. Prescott, Finn E. Kydland, John B. Long, Charles I. Plosser) who to-gether formed the so-called New Classical School of Macroeconomics (NCM). This paper is focused on the methodological elements of NCM, its models of economic fluc-tuations, some problems of stabilization policies in a NCM environment and a selective survey of empirical evidence. The first section of the paper contains a short discussion of the so-called Lucas para-digm of economic research which represents the core of NCM’s doctrine. The paradigm is based on two critical assumptions. First is that econometric modelling is superior to a verbal description of theory; the second is the necessity to construct an a priori equi-librium model. It is stressed in this text that according to NCM’s point of view, every reasonable economic theory must be empirically verifiable and able to explain any mac-roeconomic phenomenon as a result of the optimizing behaviour by rational agents who continuously maximize their welfare function. The second section presents some common features of NCM’s business cycle mod-els, such as assumptions about market efficiency and the rational expectations of market participants. After a short discussion of the market-clearing mechanism and the role of contingent claims, it is concluded that a neoclassical business cycle is, in fact, best viewed as an optimal growth curve for an economy subject to stationary stochastic shocks. A simple classification of NCM’s fluctuation models follows. The third and fourth sections explain the main principles of monetary and real busi-ness cycle models (MBC, RBC). While MBC models employ changes in the money supply and the price level as primary factors initiating macroeconomic fluctuations, RBC models emphasize the importance of changes in input productivity for explaining business cycles.

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