We examine two key channels through which commodity price super-cycles affect the economy. Higher commodity prices increase domestic demand (wealth channel), disproportionately benefiting nonexporters, and induce wage increases (cost channel) especially among unskilled workers, hurting...

We use unique firm level data from Mexico to document that non-financial corporations engage in carry trades by borrowing in foreign currency and lending in domestic currency, largely to related partners (trade credit), accumulating currency risk in the process. The interest rate differential...

In the classical literature of innovation-based endogenous growth, the main engine of long run economic growth is firm entry. Nevertheless, when projects are heterogeneous, and good ideas are scarce, a mass-composition trade off is introduced into this link: larger cohorts are characterized by a...

We propose a parsimonious framework for real rigidities, in the form of strategic complementarities, that can generate real and nominal dynamics and match key features of the data across several literatures. Existing menu-cost models featuring strategic complementarities require unrealistically...

Using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data, we show that firms lever their political connections to win stimulus grants and public expenditure channeled through politically connected firms hinders job creation. We build a unique database that links campaign contributions and state...