The real business cycle literature has largely ignored the empirical question of what role technology shocks actually play in business cycles. The observed procyclicality of total factor productivity (TFP) does not prove that technology shocks are important to business cycles, since demand...

This paper asks whether parental income per se has a positive impact on children's human capital accumulation. Previous research has established that income is positively correlated across generations. This does not prove that parents' money matters, however, since income is presumably...

The correlation between instruments and explanatory variables is a key determinant of the performance of the instrumental variables estimator. The R-squared from regressing the explanatory variable on the instrument vector is a useful measure of relevance in univariate models, but can be...

Short-run interindustry comovement may be due either to common shocks or to complementarities that propagate shocks across sectors. This paper assesses the importance of input-output linkages, aggregate activity spillovers, and local activity spillovers to comovement in postwar US manufacturing....

This dissertation explores the interactions between resource reallocation, productivity dynamics and business cycles. A theory that combines two driving forces for resource reallocation, learning and creative destruction, is presented to reconcile several empirical findings of gross job flows....

State and local governments invested 13% of their revenues on infrastructure in 2002, but existing literature provides only mixed evidence that infrastructure contributes to economic activity. To estimate the effect of infrastructure on the economy, Chapter 1 analyzes how the construction of the...

This dissertation consists of three chapters studying different issues related to self-employment and entrepreneurship. The first chapter studies the effects of labor market frictions and credit constraints in an economy with self-employment. Two types of self-employed workers emerge in the...

Recent estimates of the intergenerational correlation of income in the United States are centered around 0.6. Existing empirical work is only able to explain about half of this correlation. The first chapter of this dissertation provides a behavioral explanation that accounts for almost half of...

In this dissertation, we analyze some patterns of aggregate job reallocation that are significantly determined by the coexistence of heterogeneous businesses in any industry. First, we argue that the interaction of non-strictly convex adjustment costs and learning about true efficiency can...

In this dissertation, I further explore the role of the entrepreneurial sector in creating frictions in the economy. I examine the combined effect of private information and entrepreneurial risk aversion on the dynamics of a general equilibrium macroeconomic model. I analyze the impact of these...