In this paper we provide a new dimension to business cycle analysis, going beyond the traditional focus on the co-movements and correlations in macroeconomic aggregates. We bring to light a significant form of firm level heterogeneity over the business cycle. We analyse the responsiveness of...

We study the behaviour: of the average aggregate growth rate of an economy, driven by only small idiosyncratic total factor productivity shocks and where investment behaviour at the single plant level follows an (S,s) policy. We assume that in the case of investment (disinvestment) there are...

We propose a simple model where large innovation waves arise from the endogenous propagation of information around sectors. Innovators of each sector invest in internal R&D and in local search for information. We show that depending on the structural parameters of the single sectors, some of the...

We analyze recent contributions to growth theory based on the model of expanding variety of Romer [Romer, P. (1990). “Endogenous technological change”. Journal of Political Economy 98, 71–102]. In the first part, we present different versions of the benchmark linear model with imperfect...

We investigate a neoclassical economy with heterogeneous agents, convex technologies and idiosyncratic production risk. Combined with precautionary savings, investment risk generates rich effects that do not arise in the presence of pure endowment risk. Under a finite horizon, multiple growth...

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that Americans rely on certain for-profit corporations to supply the essentials of everyday life. Even though the government had assumed extraordinary responsibilities for the wellbeing of its citizens for the duration of the crisis, for-profit companies were...

There is cross-country and time-series evidence that volatility is associated with slower growth. However, matching this evidence has proven to be a challenge for growth models without market failures, as they tend to predict the opposite for values of risk aversion greater than unity. This note...

In the wake of financial crises, public authorities often respond by using law to modify private contracts to transfer value from those who fare better in the crisis to those who fare worse. From the perspective of the crisis victim, this is a bailout. Because this article focuses on the...

We propose and test an alternative explanation for the existence of the positive governance-return relation in the 1990s and its disappearance in the 2000s: The governance-return relation is procyclical. Corporate governance mitigates investment distortions so that firms with strong governance...

Leasing is one of the most important sources of external finance to corporate firms. This paper develops a dynamic model to investigate the role of uncertainty and financial constraint in understanding the leasing decisions of corporate firms. The model predicts that firms with high uncertainty...