Negative oil supply shocks since the 1980s have increased German inflation and reduced aggregate economic activity and prompted moderate monetary tightening to counter these inflationary effects. Using 45 years of high-frequency German administrative data, we find that these shocks disproportionally harm low-income individuals: their earnings growth falls by two percentage points two years after a 10-percent exogenous oil price rise, while high-income individuals are largely unaffected. Job-finding probabilities for low-income workers also decline significantly. This contrasts with the distributional effects of monetary policy shocks, which, while also stronger at the bottom, primarily impact job-separation probabilities. To understand the role of monetary policy in shaping these outcomes, we analyze counterfactual scenarios of policy non-response. Because the actual policy response to oil shocks involves an initial rate rise followed by a fall, a fully anticipated non-response (estimated following McKay and Wolf 2023) leaves the oil shock's aggregate and distributional effects little changed. When monetary policy repeatedly surprises by not reacting (following Sims and Zha 2006), in contrast, the implied initial monetary loosening dominates, boosting activity, inflation, and particularly employment prospects for low-income individuals.

We measure the aggregate effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment and the labor force. We exploit the variation induced by Congress' failure in December 2013 to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that ranged from 0 to 47 weeks across US states were abruptly cut to zero. In sharp contrast to their typical dynamics, labor force and employment growth accelerated sharply in states with larger cuts in benefit duration. These findings are consistent with the equilibrium search framework that assigns an important role to endogenous job creation. (JEL E24, E32, J21, J64, J65)

Countercyclical unemployment benefit extensions in the United States act as a propagation mechanism, contributing to the high persistence of unemployment following recent recessions, as well as the weak correlation between unemployment and productivity. We show this by modifying an otherwise standard frictional model of the labor market to incorporate a stochastic and state-dependent process for unemployment insurance estimated on US data. Accounting for movements in both productivity and unemployment insurance, our calibrated model is consistent with post-war labor-market dynamics. It explains the emergence of jobless recoveries in the 1990s, the low correlation between unemployment and productivity, and the apparent shifts in the Beveridge curve following recessions.

We document systematic differences in macroeconomic expectations across U.S. households and rationalize our findings with a theory of information choice. We embed this theory into an incomplete-markets model with aggregate risk. Our model is quantitatively consistent with the pattern of expectation heterogeneity in the data. Relative to a full-information counterpart, our model implies substantially increased macroeconomic volatility and inequality. We show through the example of a wealth tax that neglecting the information channel leads to erroneous conclusions about the effects of policies. While in the model without information choice a wealth tax reduces wealth inequality, in our framework it reduces information acquired in the economy, leading to increased volatility and higher wealth inequality in equilibrium.

Solutions to macroeconomic models with wealth inequality and aggregate shocks often rely on theassumption of limited but common information among households. We show that this assumptionis inconsistent with rational information choice for plausible information costs. To do so, we embedinformation choice into the workhorse heterogeneous-agent model with aggregate risk (Krusell andSmith, 1998). First, we demonstrate that the benefits of acquiring more precise information aboutthe state of the economy depend crucially on household wealth. Second, we show that suchheterogeneous incentives to acquire information combine with the strategic substitutability ofsavings choices to imply that equilibria in which households acquire the same information do notexist for plausible information costs. Finally, we document that a representative-agent equilibriummay not exist even in the absence of exogenous sources of wealth heterogeneity.

We investigate the optimal response of unemployment insurance to economic shocks, both with and without commitment. The optimal policy with commitment follows a modified Baily-Chetty formula that accounts for job search responses to future UI benefit changes. As a result, the optimal policy with commitment tends to front-load UI, unlike the optimal discretionary policy. In response to shocks intended to mimic those that induced the COVID-19 recession, we find that a large and transitory increase in UI is optimal; and that a policy rule contingent on the change in unemployment, rather than its level, is a good approximation to the optimal policy.

We investigate the optimal response of unemployment insurance to economic shocks, both with and without commitment. The optimal policy with commitment follows a modified Baily-Chetty formula that accounts for job search responses to future UI benefit changes. As a result, the optimal policy with commitment tends to front-load UI, unlike the optimal discretionary policy. In response to shocks intended to mimic those that induced the COVID-19 recession, we find that a large and transitory increase in UI is optimal; and that a policy rule contingent on the change in unemployment, rather than its level, is a good approximation to the optimal policy.

Capital flows from equal to unequal countries. We document this empirical regularityin a large sample of advanced economies. The capital flows are largely driven by privatesavings. We propose a theory that can rationalize these findings: more unequal countriesendogenously develop deeper financial markets. Households in unequal counties, in turn,borrow more, driving the observed direction of capital flows.

Economic analysis of effective policies for managing epidemics requires an integrated economic and epidemiological approach. We develop and estimate a spatial, micro-founded model of the joint evolution of economic variables and the spread of an epidemic. We empirically discipline the model using new U.S. county-level data on health, mobility, employment outcomes, and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) at a daily frequency. Absent policy or medical interventions, the model predicts an initial period of exponential growth in new cases, followed by a protracted period of roughly constant case levels and reduced economic activity. Nevertheless, if vaccine development proved impossible, and suppression cannot entirely eradicate the disease, a utilitarian policymaker cannot improve significantly over the laissez-faire equilibrium by using lockdowns. Conversely, if a vaccine will arrive within two years, NPIs can improve upon the laissez-faire outcome by dramatically decreasing the number of infectious agents and keeping infections low until vaccine arrival. Mitigation measures that reduce viral transmission (e.g., mask-wearing) both reduce the virus's spread and increase economic activity.

We study the role of heterogeneity in the transmission of foreign shocks. We build a Heterogeneous-Agent New-Keynesian Small Open Model Economy (HANKSOME) that experiences a current account reversal. Households' portfolio composition and the extent of foreign currency borrowing are key determinants of the magnitude of the contraction in consumption associated with a sudden stop in capital inflows. The contraction is more severe when households are leveraged and owe debt in foreign currency. In this setting, the revaluation of foreign debt causes a larger contraction in aggregate consumption when debt and leverage are concentrated among poorer households. Closing the output gap via an exchange-rate devaluation may therefore be detrimental to household welfare due to the heterogeneous impact of the foreign debt revaluation. Our HANKSOME framework can rationalize the observed fear of floating in emerging market economies, even in the absence of contractionary devaluations.