Owners of private companies are often highly underdiversified which exposes them to idiosyncratic risk. We investigate the consequences of underdiversification at the company level. Information on US companies and their owners is obtained from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Survey of...

This paper provides some empirical evidence and a theory of the relationship between residual wage inequality and the increasing dispersion of capital/labor ratios across firms. I document the increasing variance of capital/labor ratios across firms in the US labor market. I also show that the...

What role does labor play in firms? market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction being...

Das vorliegende Arbeitspapier möchte einen Beitrag leisten, das Investitions- und Finanzierungsverhalten multinationaler Unternehmen auszuleuchten. Hierzu werden auf der Grundlage der Surveys of Current Business, die vom Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) erhoben werden, sowie anhand von...

We develop a growth model with unemployment due to imperfections in the labor market. In this model, wage inertia and balanced budget rules cause a complementarity between capital and employment capable of explaining the existence of multiple equilibrium paths. Hysteresis is viewed as the result...

Die Weltkonjunktur zeigt sich im Frühsommer 2003 leicht aufwärtsgerichtet. Zu einer durchgreifenden Erholung ist es bisher noch nicht gekommen. Belastend wirkten insbesondere die Irak-Krise, der zwischenzeitliche Höhenflug des Erdölpreises, der Ausbruch der Lungenkrankheit SARS sowie die...

Twenty years have passed since Freeman and Medoff's What Do Unions Do? This essay assesses their analysis of how unions in the U.S. private sector affect economic performance - productivity, profitability, investment, and growth. Freeman and Medoff are clearly correct that union productivity...

Several recent changes in the Food Stamp Program have been directed toward households without children. Some, including new work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs), were intended to promote self-sufficiency, while others, including easier application and...

We argue that positive comovements between land prices and business investment are a driving force behind the broad impact of land-price dynamics on the macroeconomy. We develop an economic mechanism that captures the comovements by incorporating two key features into a DSGE model: we introduce...

In this paper we analyze the implications of status-preference, modeled as relative wealth, for the current account in a small open economy framework with capital stock dynamics. We demonstrate that the transitional dynamics of the economy is characterized by two distinct speeds of adjustment: a...