Search Results
Discussion Paper
Prices and Depreciation in the Market for Tablet Computers
Spurred by advances in electronic miniaturization and power efficiency, lightweight, powerful and inexpensive tablet computers entered the mass market in significant volumes in 2010. Since that time, sales of tablet computers have increased to account for over half of personal computer (PC) units sold worldwide.
Working Paper
Firms' relative sensitivity to aggregate shocks and the dynamics of gross job flows
We propose a measure for the importance of aggregate shocks for fluctuations in job flows at the firm level. Using data for the Portuguese economy, we find that large and old firms exhibit higher relative sensitivity to aggregate shocks and have a disproportional influence over the dynamics of aggregate job reallocation. In the overall economy, since large and old firms reallocate jobs less procyclically than small and young firms, job reallocation is less procyclical than if firm size and age classes were equally sensitive to aggregate shocks. A similar result applies in the manufacturing ...
Working Paper
The response of capital goods shipments to demand over the business cycle
This paper studies the behavior of producers of capital goods, examining how they set shipments in response to fluctuations in new orders. The paper establishes a stylized fact: the response of shipments to orders is more pronounced when the level of new orders is low relative to the level of shipments, usually after orders plunge in recessions. This cyclical change in firm behavior is quantitatively important, accounting for a large portion of the steep decline in equipment investment in the 2001 and 2007--9 recessions. We examine economic interpretations of this stylized fact using a model ...
Discussion Paper
Excess Savings during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the pandemic, historic levels of government transfers boosted household income while household spending was severely curtailed by social distancing. This led the personal saving rate to soar (Figure 1), and we estimate that U.S. households accumulated about $2.3 trillion in savings in 2020 and through the summer of 2021, above and beyond what they would have saved if income and spending components had grown at recent, pre-pandemic trends.