The heterogeneity of businesses and households impacts aggregate economic fluctuations and, in turn, is shaped by aggregate fluctuations. This view has emerged over the last decade with strong implications for the transmission and conduct of monetary policy. Our thematic review focuses on key...

Default risk models have been widely employed to assess the ability of households and sovereigns to insure themselves against shocks. Grid search has often been used to solve these models because the complexity of the problem prevents the use of faster but less general methods. In this paper, we...

We study an economy with a time-varying distribution of production to examine the role of debt in amplifying and propagating recessions. In our model, entrepreneurs use risky, long-term debt to finance capital. Liquid assets serve as collateral and transaction costs make debt illiquid. Debt...

I study debt relief as a stimulus policy using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that captures the rich heterogeneity in households' balance sheets. In this environment, a large-scale mortgage principal reduction can amplify a recovery, support house prices and lower foreclosures....

We study an economy with a time-varying distribution of production to examine the role of debt in amplifying and propagating recessions. In our model, entrepreneurs use risky, long-term debt to finance capital. Liquid assets serve as collateral and transaction costs make debt illiquid. Debt...

The heterogeneity of businesses and households impacts aggregate economic fluctuations and, in turn, is shaped by aggregate fluctuations. This view has emerged over the last decade with strong implications for the transmission and conduct of monetary policy. Our thematic review focuses on key...

Default risk models have been widely employed to assess the ability of households and sovereigns to insure themselves against shocks. Grid search has often been used to solve these models because the complexity of the problem prevents the use of faster but less general methods. In this paper, we...