This paper analyzes and computes the equilibria of economies with large numbers of heterogeneous agents who have different asset trading technologies, preferences and beliefs. We illustrate the value of our method by using it to evaluate the implications of these heterogeneities through several...

We construct a new data set of consumption and income data for the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, and we show that the extent of risk-sharing between regions varies substantially over time. In times when US housing collateral is scarce nationally, regional consumption is about twice as...

This paper analyzes the quantitative role of idiosyncratic uncertainty in an economy in which rational agents vote on hypothetical social security reforms. We find that the role of a pay-as-you-go social security system as a partial insurance and redistribution device significantly reduces...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on "Cross Sectional Facts for Macroeconomists''. The issue documents, for nine countries, the level and the evolution, over time and over the life cycle, of several dimensions of economic inequality,...

In this paper we first document inequality trends in wages, hours worked, earnings, consumption, and wealth for Germany from the last twenty years. We generally find that inequality was relatively stable in West Germany until the German Reunification, and then trended upwards for wages and...