In contrast with well known theoretical and empirical results, this model shows that no externalities, no (even mild) increasing returns, no variable capacity utilization, no variable effort, no consumption habit formation are needed for demand shocks to explain the main aspects of actual...

How does access to credit impact consumption volatility? Theory and evidence from advanced economies suggests that greater household access to finance smooths consumption. Evidence from emerging markets, where consumption is usually more volatile than income, indicates that financial reform...

This paper explores the importance of investment-specific technology changes in anticipated TFP fluctuations. To this end, we identify two types of news shocks with the maximum forecast error variance approach: news shocks to TFP and news shocks to the relative price of investment. We show in a...

In a 1957 paper, Robert Solow exploited the mathematical properties of the aggregate production function to isolate the role of disembodied “technical change” in economic growth. Solow's method allowed to disentangle the role of technical change from that of production factors, with the...

This paper provides the first assessment of the contribution of idiosyncratic shocks to aggregate fluctuations in an emerging market using confidential data on the universe of Chilean firms. We find that idiosyncratic shocks account for more than 40 percent of the volatility of aggregate sales....

This paper considers the macroeconomic effects of shocks with different persistence properties identified from surveys of expectations. Using a GARCH-in-Mean model for the US, we present persistence profiles to illustrate how news about events occurring over different time frames plays different...

Is the importance of technology shocks in accounting for the fluctuations in output and hours sensitive to the measure of output? We investigate the contribution of technological shocks to economic fluctuations when output is defined in consumption units, as commonly used in many macroeconomic...