We study business cycle driven by exogenous changes in total factor productivity and credit shocks. The latter involve changes to the fraction of assets that lenders may seize in the event of default. Following changes in aggregate total factor productivity, we find that our non-contingent loan...

The model we explore is in the spirit of Hopenhayn (1992) and, more directly, an extension of Clementi and Palazzo (2010). Our interest here is to better understand how selection reshapes the dynamics of macro aggregates in a general equilibrium setting with realistic firm-level investment...

What accounts for the sharp increase in the number of hours worked by married women? Although the number of hours worked per person in the U.S. has changed very little over the past 60 years, the labor force has undergone some pronounced shifts over that same period. One prominent change is this...

The popular press would lead us to believe that during the stock market boom of the 1990s just about everyone was buying and selling bonds every day. In fact, evidence shows that most households make only infrequent changes to their investment portfolios. "In The Role of Market Segmented Markets...

Living standards, as measured by average income per person, vary widely across countries. Differences in income result in large disparities in spending on goods and services by people living in different economies. What makes some countries rich and others poor? Furthermore, what determines...

Changes in the stock of firms' inventories are an important component of the business cycle. In fact, discussion about the timing of a recovery following a recession often focuses on inventories. In "The Role of Inventories in the Business Cycle," Aubhik Khan surveys the facts about inventory...

In the final article this quarter, Aubhik Khan wonders: What determines whether a manufacturing plant survives? Is it access to credit markets? Or does learning about plants' profitability over time determine survival? Should government policy play a role in helping plants survive? In...

Aubhik Khan explains some of the things economists have learned about how investment changes over the business cycle