This paper studies quarterly employment flows of approximately 10,000 U.S. manufacturing establishments. The authors use establishments' hours-week to construct measures of the deviation between desired and actual employment and use these as the establishments' main state variables. The main...

The basic premise of this paper is that understanding aggregate dynamics requires considering that agents are heterogeneous and that they do not adjust continuously to the shocks they perceive. The authors provide a general characterization of lumpy behavior at the microeconomic level in terms...

In this paper, the authors provide a framework to study the aggregate dynamic behavior of an economy where individual units follow (S, s) policies and are subject to aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks. They characterize structural and stochastic heterogeneities that ensure convergence of the...

In this paper, the authors study the dynamic behavior of a menu-cost economy where firms are heterogeneous. In this contex t, they generalize the Caplin and Spulber (1987) monetary-neutrality result; show that uniqueness of equilibria depends on the degree of dispersion of firms' positions in...

The simple permanent-income model provides a good description of the medium-long run behavior of aggregate non-durables consumption, but fails to describe its short run behavior. In this paper I, present a non-representative agent model with near-rational macroeconomic units a la Akerlof-Yellen...

Latin American economies are exposed to substantial external vulnerability. Domestic imbalances and terms of trade shocks are often exacerbated by sudden stops of capital inflow. In this paper we explore ways of overcoming external vulnerability, drawing lessons from a detailed comparison of the...

Three of the most important recent facts in global macroeconomics — the sustained rise in the US current account deficit, the stubborn decline in long run real rates, and the rise in the share of US assets in global portfolio — appear as anomalies from the perspective of...

In this paper we provide a model of the macroeconomic consequences of a shortage of safe assets. In particular, we discuss the emergence of a deflationary safety trap equilibrium which is an acute form of a liquidity trap. In this context, issuing public debt, swapping private risky assets for...

In this paper we provide a model of the macroeconomic consequences of a shortage of safe assets. In particular, we discuss the emergence of a deflationary safety trap equilibrium which is an acute form of a liquidity trap. In this context, issuing public debt, swapping private risky assets for...

The global economy has a chronic shortage of safe assets which lies behind many recent macroeconomic imbalances. This paper provides a simple model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM), its recessionary safety traps, and its policy antidotes. Safety traps share many common features with...