This paper analyzes the implications of the gradual rise in bank concentration since the 1990s for the transmission of monetary policy. I use branch-level data on deposit and loan rates to evaluate the monetary policy pass-through conditional on the level of local bank concentration and bank...

We provide empirical evidence on banks’ market power in financial services and its implications for monetary policy transmission through deposit rates. Banks with market power in financial services charge higher fees for their service and also offer lower deposit rates with less pass-through...

This paper examines the pass-through of cost-push shocks to customers at a granular level. Using unique firm-level survey data, we document five facts about pass-through across firms, sectors, and over time. We highlight a new channel relevant for pass-through: beliefs about the expected...

The recent surge in inflation led many unions and firms to alter their bargaining and wage-setting policies. Using novel German firm-level survey data, we document the extent of state dependence in wage setting across firms and workers during periods of high and low inflation. We find state...

We study monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with a variable credit spread and scope for central bank asset purchases to matter. A novel financial and labor market interaction generates an endogenous cost-push channel in the Phillips curve and a credit wedge in the IS curve. The "divine...

Is time-varying firm-level uncertainty a major cause or amplifier of the business cycle? This paper investigates this question in the context of a heterogeneous-firm RBC model with persistent firm-level productivity shocks and lumpy capital adjustment, where cyclical changes in uncertainty...

Are firms` expectations systematically too optimistic or too pessimistic? Does it matter? We use micro data from the West German manufacturing subset of the IFO Business Climate Survey to infer quarterly production changes at the firm level and combine them with production expectations over a...

Using firm-level survey data for the West German manufacturing sector, this paper revisits the technology-driven business cycle hypothesis for the case of aggregate investment. We construct a survey-based measure of technology shocks to gauge their contribution to short-run investment...

Using a German firm-level data set, this paper is the first to jointly study the cyclical properties of the cross-sections of firm-level real value added and Solow residual innovations, as well as capital and employment adjustment. We find two new business cycle facts: 1) The cross-sectional...

We study the relationship between employment growth and worker flows in excess of job flows (churn) at the establishment level using the new German AWFP dataset spanning from 1975-2014. Churn is above 5 percent of employment along the entire employment growth distribution and most pronounced at...