Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby increasing space costs (ii) directly limiting store size and (iii)...

Abstract Commentators on the `East Asian Miracle' of inclusive growth have often pointed toward shared rural growth policies. But why were these policies not chosen elsewhere? This paper models voters who invest in either subsistence or a complex technology in which public goods complement...

We study the mechanisms through which the adoption of the Euro delayed, rather than advanced, economic reforms in the Euro zone periphery and led to the deterioration of important institutions in these countries. We show that the abandonment of the reform process and the institutional...

We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles. First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Second, we quantify the impact of time-varying...

There is much evidence that price-adjustment frequencies vary widely across industries. This paper shows that inflation persistence is lower with heterogeneity in price stickiness than without it, taking as given the degree of persistence in variables affecting inflation. Differences in the...

Econometrica publishes original articles in all branches of economics - theoretical and empirical, abstract and applied, providing wide-ranging coverage across the subject area. It promotes studies that aim at the unification of the theoretical-quantitative and the empirical-quantitative...

The paper discusses some fundamental problems in monetary economics associated with the determination and role of the numéraire. The issues are introduced by formalising a proposal, attributed to Eisler, to remove the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates by unbundling the numéraire and...

I study the cyclical behavior of an equilibrium search model with endogenous job creation and destruction, with focus the model’s failure to match the observed cyclical volatility of unemployment.. Job creation in the model is influenced by wages in new matches. I summarize microeconometric...

We study whether fiscal restrictions affect volatilities and correlations of macrovariables and the probability of excessive debt for a sample of 48 US states. Fiscal constraints are characterized with a number of indicators and volatility and correlations are computed in several ways. The...

A striking fact about prices is the prevalence of ``sales'': large temporary price cuts followed by a return exactly to the former price. This paper builds a macroeconomic model with a rationale for sales based on firms facing consumers with different price sensitivities. Even if firms can vary...