We uncover new facts: U.S. banks countercyclically vary the ratio of charge-offs to defaulted loans (COD). The variance of this ratio is roughly 15 times larger than that of GDP. Canonical financial accelerator models cannot explain this variance. We develop an expression for the wedge between...

We study the determinants of inventory accumulation in a structural VAR framework with news shocks. Specifically, we investigate how news shocks affect two key determinants of inventory movements, namely rates of return and marginal costs. We establish that inventories react strongly and...

We show that a model with knowledge capital can generate business cycles driven by expectations of future movement in total factor productivity (TFP). These cycles are characterized by a boom in which consumption, investment, output and hours-worked all rise in advance of any movement in TFP. We...

Renewed reliance on markets has made it more difficult for democratic institutions of production to survive. The impact of diminished market mediation is illustrated by the cases of the plywood cooperatives in the United States and the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. New property relations and...

What is the potential for using nonprofit institutions to foster radical change in the United States? At a time when the public sector is heavily constrained, does the third sector provide a base for radical activity? Recent writing advocating growth of the sector is surveyed, as are some of the...

For several decades workers’ participation in management was a persistent demand of the left. In the neoliberal era it became, in a twisted way, a reality for some workers. Team organization of production, reduction of supervisory staffing, and a constant drive for productivity...

Cooperatives function in market economies, but they are not always served well by markets. Workers’ cooperatives avoid use of the labor market by definition, but they encounter forms of market failure and system mismatch in equity markets. Economic theory of the labor-managed firm and the...