This paper investigates how, in a heterogeneous agents model with financial frictions, idiosyncratic individual shocks interact with exogenous aggregate shocks to generate time-varying levels of leverage and endogenous aggregate risk. To do so, we show how such a model can be efficiently...

We review the literature on uncertainty shocks and business cycle research. First, we motivate the study of uncertainty shocks by documenting the presence of time-variation in the volatility of macroeconomic time series. Second, we enumerate the mechanisms that researchers have postulated to...

We argue that political distribution risk is an important driver of aggregate fluctuations. To that end, we document significant changes in the capital share after large political events, such as political realignments, modifications in collective bargaining rules, or the end of dictatorships,...

This paper argues that institutions and political party systems are simultaneously determined. A large change to the institutional framework, such as the creation of the euro by a group of European countries, will realign – after a transition period – the party system as well. The new...

This guide provides a practical introduction to parallel computing in economics. After a brief introduction to the basic ideas of parallelization, we show how to parallelize a prototypical application in economics using, on CPUs, Julia, Matlab, R, Python, C++-OpenMP, Rcpp–OpenMP, and C++-MPI,...

This paper combines data on GDP, unemployment, and Google's COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports with data on deaths from COVID-19 to study the macroeconomic outcomes of the pandemic. We present results from an international perspective using data at the country level as well as results for...

Job security provisions are commonly invoked to explain the high and persistent European unemployment rates. This belief has led several countries to reform their labor markets and liberalize the use of fixed-term contracts. Despite how common such contracts have become after deregulation, there...

This paper examines how supply-side policies may play a role in fighting a low aggregate demand that traps an economy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) of nominal interest rates. Future increases in productivity or reductions in mark-ups triggered by supply-side policies generate a wealth effect...

This paper studies the econometrics of computed dynamic models. Since these models generally lack a closed-form solution, their policy functions are approximated by numerical methods. Hence, the researcher can only evaluate an approximated likelihood associated with the approximated policy...

One basic feature of aggregate data is the presence of time-varying variance in real and nominal variables. Periods of high volatility are followed by periods of low volatility. For instance, the turbulent 1970s were followed by the much more tranquil times of the great moderation from 1984 to...