Using a multi-industry real business cycle model, we empirically examine the microeconomic origins of aggregate tail risks. Our model, estimated using industry-level data from 1972 to 2016, indicates that industry-specific shocks account for most of the third and fourth moments of GDP growth

This paper explores trends in time alone and with others in the United States. Since 2003, Americans have increasingly spent their free time alone, on leisure at home, and have decreasingly spent their free time with individuals from other households. These trends are more pronounced for...

The returns to skills and the nature of work differ systematically across labor markets of different sizes. Prior research has pointed to worker interactions, technological innovation, and specialization as key sources of urban productivity gains, but has been limited by the available data in...

This paper investigates firms’ post-merger product repositioning. We compile information on conglomerate firms’ additions and removals of products for a sample of 61 mergers and acquisitions across a wide variety of consumer packaged goods markets. We find that mergers lead to a net...

We study changes in markups across 72 product markets from 2006 to 2018. A growing literature has documented a rise in markups over time using a production function approach; we instead employ the standard microeconomic method, which is to estimate demand and then invert firms’ first-order...

We investigate the impact of a set of place-based subsidies introduced in Turkey in 2012. Using firm-level balance-sheet data along with data on the domestic production network, we first assess the policy’s direct and indirect impacts. We find an increase in economic activity in...