This paper provides new evidence that estimates based on aggregate data will understate the true procyclicality of total factor productivity. I examine plant-level data and show that some industries experience countercyclical reallocations of output shares among firms at different points in the...

This paper investigates the performance of a metric that links two measures of critical importance in marketing and accounting. This metric is the market value/sales revenue ratio. We discover several surprising insights when this measure is applied to U.S. markets. First, the long run expected...

Firms have very different inventory levels. How much of this heterogeneity is due to differences among firms, versus among industries? Using all observations in COMPUSTAT for 1950 through 2004, we find that both industry and firm effects are significant. Further, firm effects are as strong as,...

The paper analyzes, in a general equilibrium framework under the assumption of fixed costs and microlevel uncertainty, the impact of transitory aggregate shocks on the behavior of macroeconomic variables. We establish that transitory shocks can have persistent effects and can cause significant...

This paper estimates the output gap in Russia using a utilization-adjusted production function approach, which we argue is preferable to traditional output gap methods. The approach amounts to (1) using available surveys to estimate the 'natural rates' of capacity and labor utilization above...

In this paper we describe patterns of factor utilization and output adjustment at the plant level. A burgeoning literature emphasizes that the dynamics of aggregate economic activity are determined by the interaction of heterogeneous agents who face differing costs of adjusting to aggregate...

Using confidential establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database, this paper documents how local shocks propagate across U.S. regions through firms' internal networks of establishments. Consistent with a model of optimal within-firm resource allocation, we...

According to Hayek's “theory of the Ricardo Effect” there is a “decline of investment” on the part of the consumer goods industries that starts halfway through the cyclical upswing. This “decline of investment” then gradually leads to the “scarcity of capital” in the consumer...

This paper proposes a unique model of capacity utilization in which the firm varies capacity utilization by a variable number of shifts when facing demand fluctuations. In the long run, the firm optimally chooses a capacity level based on expected demand conditions. In the short run, when facing...

What is the role of production networks in inducing self-fulfilling business cycles? We build a continuous-time multisector business cycle model with input-output linkages and credit constraints to study this. Credit constraints faced by productive firms endogenously create self-fulfilling...