Ljungqvist and Sargent (2017) (LS) show that unemployment fluctuations can be understood in terms of a quantity they call the "fundamental surplus." However, their analysis ignores risk premia, a force that Hall (2017) shows is important in understanding unemployment fluctuations. We show how...

We study the role of firm heterogeneity in affecting business cycle dynamics and optimal stabilization policy. Firms differ in their degree of cyclicality, and hence, exposure to aggregate risk, leading to firm-specific risk premia that influence resource allocations. The heterogeneous firm...

There is now considerable evidence that business cycle variation in output and employment in the U.S. differs in expansions and contractions. We present nonparametric evidence that asymmetries are strongest in durable goods manufacturing. In a Markov switching framework, we find two leading...

Combining micro and macro data, we construct demand-side shocks, which we take to be exogenous for individual firms. We estimate a reduced-form model to describe how firms adjust their production, employment, capital stock, and inventories in response to such shocks. Then, we chose the...

This paper addresses the lack of consensus in the empirical literature regarding the effects of technological diffusion news shocks. We attribute the conflicting evidence to the wide diversity in terms of variable settings, productivity series used and identification schemes applied. We analyze...

We reexamine the issue of executive compensation within a gen-eral equilibrium production context. Intertemporal optimality placesstrong restrictions on the form of a representative manager's compen-sation contract, restrictions that appear to be incompatible with thefact that the bulk of many...

We study scar formation and persistence after a house price bubble has burst using data on 3,089 US counties and county equivalents over the period 1980q1-2019q4. We date house price booms and busts for each county, and identify periods with explosive house price developments. Applying a sharp...

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

This paper extends the literature on the information content of financial variables with respect to future economic growth. It shows that variables originating from both the equity market and the bond market in Switzerland are useful indicators for forecasting the Swiss business cycle. In...

This paper proposes a quantitative theory of the interaction between private and public debt in an open economy. Excessive private debt increases the frequency of financial crises. During such crises the government provides fiscal bailouts financed with risky public debt. This response may cause...