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...

Traditionally, observed fluctuations in aggregate economic time series have been mainly modeled as being the result of exogenous disturbances. A better understanding of macroeconomic phenomena, however, surely requires looking directly at the relations between variables that may trigger...

Traditionally, observed fluctuations in aggregate economic time series have been mainly modelled as being the result of exogenous disturbances. A better understanding of macroeconomic phenomena, however, surely requires looking directly at the relations between variables that may trigger...

Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction assumes that volatile growth leads to a more efficient reallocation of resources and the adoption of new technologies. However, this can only occur if such productivity-enhancing opportunities are available within society. This availability is...

We review evidence on the Great Moderation together with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level to develop a potential explanation for the decline in aggregate volatility since the 1980s and its consequences. The key elements are declines in firm-level volatility and aggregate...

We review evidence on the Great Moderation together with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level to develop a potential explanation for the decline in aggregate volatility since the 1980s and its consequences. The key elements are declines in firm-level volatility and aggregate...

Uncertainty affects business cycles and asset prices. We estimate firm-level productivity and decompose total uncertainty risk measured as cross-sectional productivity dispersion into macro uncertainty (an aggregate component) and micro uncertainty (an idiosyncratic component). We find that...

We use a Dixit-Stiglitz setting to show that aggregate productivity fluctuations can be generated through changes in the dispersion of firms' productivity. When the elasticity of substitution among goods is larger than one, an increase in the dispersion raises aggregate productivity because...

This paper argues that a specification of stochastic volatility commonly used to analyze the Great Moderation in DSGE models may not be appropriate, because the level of a process with this specification does not have conditional or unconditional moments. This is unfortunate because agents may...