A real-business-cycle model with human capital accumulation: lessons for Bulgaria (1999-2018)

We introduce human capital accumulation into a real-business-cycle setup. We calibrate the model to Bulgarian data for the period following the introduction of the currency board arrangement (1999-2018). We investigate the quantitative importance of the presence of skill acquisition for cyclical fluctuations in Bulgaria. After subjecting the model to a battery of tests, we find the quantitative effect of such a channel - aside from producing a moderate increase in the variability of hours - to be relatively small. In other words, government spending on education turns out to be an ineffective instrument when it comes to smoothing the cycle.