Measured total factor productivity often declines sharply during financial crises. In 1982, the Chilean manufacturing sector suffered a severe contraction in output, most of which can be accounted for by a falling Solow residual. This paper uses establishment data from the Chilean manufacturing...

Using a newly created microeconomic archive of U.S. imports at the tariff-line level for 1930-33, we construct industry-level tariff wedges incorporating the input-output structure of U.S. economy and the heterogenous role of imports across sectors of the economy. We use these wedges to show...

Wage posting models of job search typically assume that firms can commit to paying workers exactly the posted wage. We relax this assumption and impose "downward" commitment; firms can commit only to paying at least their advertised wage. As each firm can only commit to pay at least their...

I develop a general equilibrium model in which the quality of household financial decisions is endogenously determined by the incentives to exert effort in learning about financial opportunities. The model generates predictions for asset market participation and returns across households....

We study competitive equilibrium in sequential economies under limited commitment. Default induces permanent exclusion from financial markets and endogenously determined solvency constraints prevent debt repudiation. Our analysis shows that such an enforcement mechanism is essentially fragile,...