How do import prices respond to exchange rate changes, and does this response vary across products or across time? We document two new and related facts: 1. Individual items with high price change variance have greater exchange rate pass-through. 2. During times when the cross-sectional variance...

We argue that the time-varying regional distribution of housing equity influences the aggregate consequences of monetary policy through its effects on mortgage refinancing. Using detailed loan-level data, we show that regional differences in housing equity affect refinancing and spending...

We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

Business cycle models typically abstract from the distinction between durable and non-durable consumption. However, in the 2007 recession, durable expenditures fell by three times as much as GDP while non-durable expenditures fell by slightly less than GDP. We show that simple extensions of...

I show that the cross-sectional standard deviation of individual price changes in the BLS CPI database is countercyclical and comoves strongly with the frequency of price adjustments. Standard Ss models with only first moment shocks cannot explain these facts. Adding a second moment...

Is monetary policy less effective at increasing real output during periods of high volatility than during normal times? In this article, I argue that greater volatility leads to an increase in aggregate price flexibility so that nominal stimulus mostly generates inflation rather than output...