UC San Diego

The dissertation is comprised of three chapters, each a free-standing paper. The first chapter addresses the issue of data revision: the fact that many major macroeconomic data series are revised over time. I argue that decision- makers take this reality, and the resulting data uncertainty, into account. Therefore models of these agents must take account of the measurable data uncertainty surrounding their choices. The second chapter notes that the United States' labor force can be demographically partitioned into groups with different cyclical quantity and price characteristics. We argue that the main determinant of these differences comes from the supply side of the economy, i.e. the production function. The third chapter argues that investment-specific technological change, as measured in recent literature, can be contaminated by endogenous firm entry and exit. We describe a two-sector model of the economy, calibrate it to the United States, and analyze its performance in explaining the dynamics of consumption, investment, and labor input used for the production of both