Net product entry is procyclical, which amplifies fluctuations in consumer welfare over the cycle if consumers have love for variety. Using barcode-level data covering grocery expenditures in 26 major cities, I establish that differences in city-level product entry are largely uncorrelated with local economic conditions. I provide evidence that city-level changes in product variety over the bus...

Wage Flexibility and Employment Fluctuations: Evidence from the Housing Sector* Many economists suspect that downward nominal wage rigidities in ongoing labor contracts are an important source of employment fluctuations over the business cycle but there is little direct empirical evidence on this conjecture. This paper compares three occupations in the housing sector with very different wage se...

Earl y analysts of business cycles believed that each cyclical phase of the economy carries within it the seed that generates the next cyclical phase. A boom generates the next recession; that recession generates the next boom; and the economy is caught forever in a self-sustaining cycle. In contrast, modern theories of business cycles attribute cyclical fluctuations to the cumulative effects o...