We use a factor model to detect the presence of economy-wide underlying forces leading firm growth. By using quarterly firm level data on 660 US firms for 20 years, we find evidence of a unique common factor explaining approximately one fifth of the variance of firm growth rates. We investigate...

This paper explores the statistical properties of household consumption-expenditure budget share distributions – defined as the share of household total expenditure spent for purchasing a specific category of commodities – for a large sample of Italian households in the period 1989–2004....