Almost two thirds of the cross-plant dispersion in marginal revenue products of capital occurs across plants within the same firm rather than between firms. Even though firms allocate investment very differently across their plants, they do not equalize marginal revenue products across their...

Using confidential Census data on U.S. manufacturing plants, we document that most of the dispersion in investment rates across plants occurs within firms instead of across firms. Between firm dispersion is almost acyclical, but within-firm dispersion is strongly procyclical. To investigate the...

We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles. First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Second, we quantify the impact of timevarying...