In this work we study the granular origins of business cycles and their possible underlying drivers. As shown by Gabaix (2011), the skewed nature of firm size distributions implies that idiosyncratic (and independent) firm-level shocks may account for a significant portion of aggregate...

We analyze monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous firms and financial frictions. Firms differ in their productivity and net worth and face collateral constraints that cause capital misallocation. TFP endogenously depends on the time-varying distribution of firms. Although a...

Empirical evidence demonstrates that credit standards, including lending margins and collateral requirements, move in a countercyclical direction. In this study, we construct a small open economy model with financial frictions to generate the countercyclical movement in credit standards. Our...

In this paper we: (i) provide a model of endogenous risk intolerance and serve aggregate demand contractions following a large (non-financial) shock; and (ii) demonstrate the effectiveness of Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAPs) in addressing these contractions. The key mechanism stems from...

This paper identifies the aggregate financial shocks and quantifies their effects on business investment based on an estimated DSGE model with firm-level heterogeneity. On average, financial shocks contribute only 1.1% of the variation in U.S. public firms' aggregate investment. The negligible...

One of the most significant characteristics of optimizing models is that the behavioral equations involved are typically forward looking, i.e., agents are concerned about the future rather than the past. This creates difficulties when modelling some of the business-cycle patterns widely observed...

This paper analyzes the link between monetary policy and capital misallocation in a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous firms and financial frictions. In the model, firms with a high return to capital increase their investment more strongly in response to a monetary policy expansion, thus...

According to the mainstream view, labour market institutions (LMI) are the key determinants of unemployment in the medium run. The actual empirical explanatory power of measures for labour market institutions, however, has been called into question recently (Baker et al 2005, Baccaro and Rei...

This paper demonstrates that tractability gained from the Calvo pricing assumption is costly in terms of aggregate dynamics. I derive a generalized New Keynesian Phillips curve featuring a generalized hazard function, non-zero steady state inflation and real rigidity. Analytically, I find that...

When the current financial crisis has widened to a global economic crisis an urgent call for implementing financial markets and financial institutions in business cycle models emerged. By modelling commercial banks as a third type of economic agent, we are able to implement the feature of early...