This paper uses a database covering the universe of French firms for the period 1990-2007 to provide a forensic account of the role of individual firms in generating aggregate fluctuations. We set up a simple multi-sector model of heterogeneous firms selling to multiple markets to motivate a...

This paper proposes a new channel through which international trade affects macroeconomic volatility. We study a multi-country model with heterogeneous firms that are subject to idiosyncratic firm-specific shocks. When the distribution of firm size follows a power law with exponent sufficiently...