This paper applies the insights of the literature on idiosyncratic shocks to inividual labor productivity to the dynamics of plant-level total factor productivity. Recent work in I.O. has emphasized the importance of firm- and plant-level heterogeneity in total factor productivity. Most of the...

Recent work in I.O. has emphasized the importance of firm- and plant-level heterogeneity in total factor productivity. Jensen and McGuckin (1996) argue that the major empirical regularity in studies of firm or establishment level productivity is heterogeneity within sectors and across plant...

contributions to aggregate productivity growth over this period. While reallocation is important for aggregate productivity growth, it contributes little to fluctuations in aggregate productivity growth at business cycle frequencies. Almost all of the volatility in aggregate productivity growth...

This paper uses confidential Census data, specifically the 1990 and 2000 Census Long Form data, to study the demographic processes underlying the gentrification of low-income urban neighborhoods during the 1990's. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis is conducted at the more refined...

We build up from the plant level an aggregate(d) Solow residual by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. Our framework uses the Petrin and Levinsohn (2010) definition of aggregate productivity growth, which...

We analyze a dynamic moral hazard setting, in which agents can borrow and lend and their decisions about effort, consumption and savings are private information. In contrast with previous findings, we show that as long as agents do not have perfect control over publicly observable outcomes, the...

Several frictions restrict the government s ability to tax assets. First of all, it is very costly to monitor trades on international asset markets. Moreover, agents can resort to non-observable low-return assets such as cash, gold or foreign currencies if taxes on observable assets become too...

Several frictions restrict the government's ability to tax assets. First of all, it is very costly to monitor trades on international asset markets. Moreover, agents can resort to non-observable low-return assets such as cash, gold or foreign currencies if taxes on observable assets become too...

A financial stability fund set by a union of sovereign countries (e.g. the European Stability Mechanism), can improve countries's ability to borrow and lend, and to share risks, with respect to debt financing. Efficiency gains arise from the ability of the fund to offer long-term financial...

In the typical model of risk sharing with limited commitment (e.g. Kocherlakota, 1996) agents do not have access to any technology transferring resources intertemporally. In our model, agents have a private (non-contractible and/or non-observable) saving technology. We first show that, under...