This masterclass focuses on recent theoretical advances that incorporate firm heterogeneity into endogenous growth models. Traditional macroeconomic analyses often simplify firm characteristics by using representative-agent frameworks, overlooking significant firm-level differences in productivity, innovation, market power, and pricing decisions. However, empirical analysis of important...
In modern empirical macroeconomics, structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) are routinely used to trace out the responses of macroeconomic variables to structural shocks. These structural shocks could be monetary policy shocks, tax shocks, oil price shocks, and many others. For example, central banks use SVARs to analyse the effects of interest movements on the economy. A crucial step in this...
This study investigates how actual and anticipated intergenerational wealth transfers – i.e., inter vivos gifts and inheritances – contribute to inequalities in the transition to homeownership by parental social class. Utilizing discrete-time survival analysis on data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (N = 13,018), we find that individuals whose parents were manual workers or service workers ...
This paper investigates the mental health consequences of spousal death and the role of survivor benefits in mitigating these effects. Using Dutch administrative data and a staggered difference-in-differences, we first document a significant increase in the consumption of benzodiazepines - a proxy for deteriorating mental health - following widowhood (up to +3 percentage points, or +30%, in the...
