This paper attempts to quantitatively identify the factors that drive wealth dynamics in the U.S. and are consistent with its observed skewed cross-sectional distribution and social mobility. We concentrate on three critical factors: a skewed and persistent distribution of earnings, differential...

We examine whether sentiment influences aggregate demand by studying the relationship between the Michigan Survey expectations concerning national output growth and future economic activity at the state level. We instrument for local sentiments with political outcomes, positing that agents in...

The distributions of wealth in the US and many other countries are strikingly concentrated on the top and skewed to the right. To explain the income and wealth inequality, we provide a tractable heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete markets in continuous time. We separate illiquid capital...

We argue that positive comovements between land prices and business investment are a driving force behind the broad impact of land-price dynamics on the macroeconomy. We develop an economic mechanism that captures the comovements by incorporating two key features into a DSGE model: we introduce...

Conventional wisdom has it that inventory investment destabilizes the economy be-cause it is procyclical to sales. Khan and Thomas (2007) show that the conventional wisdom is wrong in a general equilibrium (S,s) model with capital. We argue that their finding is not robust - the conventional...

In the U.S. economy during the past 25 years, house prices exhibit fluctuations considerably larger than house rents, and these large fluctuations tend to move together with business cycles. We build a simple theoretical model to characterize these observations by showing the tight connection...