Is time-varying firm-level uncertainty a major cause or amplifier of the business cycle? This paper investigates this question in the context of a heterogeneous-firm RBC model with persistent firm-level productivity shocks and lumpy capital adjustment, where cyclical changes in uncertainty...

Using a German firm-level data set, this paper is the first to jointly study the cyclical properties of the cross-sections of firm-level real value added and Solow residual innovations, as well as capital and employment adjustment. We find two new business cycle facts: 1) The cross-sectional...

Die Coronakrise hat die deutsche Wirtschaft in eine Rezession gestürzt, die viele Jobs bedroht. Tatsächlich hat der Beschäftigungsabbau bereits begonnen, wie Umfragen des ifo Instituts belegen. Aber über welche Kanäle trifft der Corona-Schock die deutschen Unternehmen? Dieser Beitrag...

Das ifo Institut befragt seit Anfang 2013 die an den ifo Konjunkturumfragen teilnehmenden Firmen des Verarbeitenden Gewerbes nach Zukunftsszenarien für ihren Umsatz im nächsten Quartal und leitet daraus verschiedene Erwartungsgrößen ab. Eine dieser Größen – der Unterschied zwischen dem...

In diesem Artikel werden die wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen eines möglichen Stopps russischer Energieimporte auf die deutsche Wirtschaft diskutiert. Wir zeigen, dass die Auswirkungen wahrscheinlich substanziell, aber handhabbar sein werden. Kurzfristig würde ein Stopp der russischen...

When employers face a trade-off between growing large and paying low wages—that is, when they have monopsony power—some productive employers will decide to acquire fewer customers, forgo sales, and remain small. These decisions have adverse consequences for aggregate labor productivity....

This paper studies how managers plan under uncertainty. In a new survey panel on German manufacturing firms, we show that uncertainty reflects change: Planning incorporates higher subjective uncertainty about future sales growth when the firm has just experienced unusual growth, and more so if...

We exploit the unexpected announcement of an immediate, temporary VAT cut in Germany in the second half of 2020 as a natural experiment to study the spending response to unconventional fiscal policy. We use survey and scanner data on households’ consumption expenditures and their perceived...

This paper examines how households adjusted their consumption behavior in response to COVID-19 infection risk during the early phase of the pandemic. We use a monthly consumption survey specifically designed by the German Statistical Office covering the second wave of COVID-19 infections from...

This article discusses the economic effects of a potential cut-off of the German economy from Russian energy imports. We show that the effects are likely to be substantial but manageable. In the short run, a stop of Russian energy imports would lead to a GDP decline in range between 0.5% and 3%...