We examine the channels through which commodity price super-cycles affect the economy. Exploiting regional variation in exposure to commodity price shocks and administrative firm-level data from Brazil we disentangle two transmission channels. Higher commodity prices increase domestic demand...

We develop a simple menu-cost model with non-constant elasticity of demand that features idiosyncratic productivity and demand shocks. The model is calibrated to match firm-level productivity and demand processes estimated from U.S. data. Despite its simplicity, the calibrated model delivers...

Uncertainty triggers two confounding effects: a realization and an anticipation effect. By using the 2019 riots in Chile as a quasi-natural experiment, we show that the pricing behavior of supermarkets is consistent with a pure anticipation effect: during the 31-day period following the start of...

We study the role of firms' political influence on the effectiveness of government spending using ARRA as a laboratory. Through an IV approach, we show that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of politically connected spending lowers the job creation effect of stimulus by 33 percent at...

During the 2018-2019 trade war, U.S. exports have been affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs, U.S. import tariffs that act through input-output linkages, and policy uncertainty. We establish, first, that the large negative impact of foreign tariffs on U.S. exports is highly heterogeneous...

We propose a parsimonious framework for real rigidities, in the form of strategic complementarities, that can generate real and nominal dynamics and match key features of the data across several literatures. Existing menu-cost models featuring strategic complementarities require unrealistically...

We use unique firm-level data from Mexico to document that non-financial corporations engage in carry trades by borrowing in foreign currency (FX) and lending in domestic currency, largely in the form of trade credit, accumulating currency risk in the process. We show at a quarterly frequency...

Real exchange rates (RERs) display sizable uctuations not only over the business cycle, but also at lower frequencies, resulting in large and persistent swings over decades|facts that many business cycle models struggle to match. We propose an international macroeconomics model with endogenous...