Although it is well known that aggregate variables have slow-moving stochastic components, research on macroeconomic fluctuations has focused primarily on high-frequency movements of the data. I document some interesting lower-frequency facts in U.S. postwar data and investigate whether dynamic...

In this paper, I examine the implications of collateral constraints in a production economy and demonstrate that collateral constraints may have a role to play in resolving two outstanding puzzles: the risk-free rate puzzle and the total factor productivity puzzle. The first puzzle, as noted by...

I construct a heterogeneous agents economy that mimics the time-series behavior of the US earnings distribution from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks driving the model using data on income inequality, on...

This paper studies the provision of incentives to reallocate capital when managers are reluctant to relinquish control and have private information about the productivity of assets under their control. We show that when managers get private benefits from running projects substantial bonuses are...

Asset pricing implications for business cycle analysis David Backus, Bryan Routledge, and Stanley Zin Although the stochastic growth model has become the benchmark for business cycle analysis, many of its implications for asset prices and returns are grossly counterfactual. For example, the...

I propose a new valuation ratio: durables price over the rental cost of capital, which is a direct analogue of the price-dividend ratio. I show that it is a rational forecast of future discount rates and future growth rates of the rental cost. In order to impute the unobservable rental cost, I...

We are interested in the macroeconomic implications of the separation of ownership and control. We propose an alternative decentralized interpretation of the stochastic growth model, one where shareholders hire a self-interested manager who is in charge of the firm’s hiring and investment...

Net equity issuance occurs frequently and is quantitatively important for both small and large publicly traded firms. Moreover, we show that net equity and net debt issuance are positively correlated and both are procyclical for small firms. For large firms net equity issuance is neither...

The role of credit market imperfections as source of amplification and persistence of temporary exogenous shocks to the economy is widely accepted in the literature. Little attention has been paid to the possibility that credit frictions also generate instability. This paper proposes a theory of...