Using the approach suggested by Gabaix (Econometrica 2011) this paper demonstrates that idiosyncratic shocks in the largest firms are important for an understanding of aggregate volatility in German manufacturing industries. The implications of this finding for theoretical and empirical research...

We evaluate the Smets-Wouters model of the US dynamically using indirect inference with a VAR representation of the main US data series. We find that the New Keynesian SW model is badly rejected by the data's dynamic properties and in particular cannot match the variability of the data. An...

This paper formulates and tests a model that describes the asset and financing adjustments of U.S. non-financial enterprises over the twentieth century. Asset adjustments change the expected income and operating risk of firms while financing adjustments change the financial risk. To protect debt...

Economic output may drop for reasons related with supply, such as a fall in the number of the employed factors of production or increases in real costs; and for reasons related with demand, such as an increase in non-productive market power or a fall in aggregate demand, the worst type of...

Somebody must step up. Somebody must call out the stabilization irrelevance of the American Economic Association's signature macro journal, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. The on-going failure of the nine-year-old journal is most egregiously illustrated by its treatment of the Great...