Customer Capital, Markup Cyclicality, and Amplification

Sung Ki Hong

No 2017-33, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: This paper studies the importance of firm-level price markup dynamics for business cycle fluctuations. Using state-of-the-art IO techniques to measure the behavior of markups over the business cycle at the firm level, I find that markups are countercyclical with an average elasticity of -1.1 with respect to real GDP. Importantly, I find substantial heterogeneity in markup cyclicality across firms, with small firms having significantly more counter-cyclical markups than large firms. Then, I develop a general equilibrium model by embedding customer capital (due to deep habits as in Ravn, Schmitt-Grohe, and Uribe, 2006) into a standard Hopenhayn (1992) model of firm dynamics with entry and exit. The calibrated model replicates these empirical facts and produces counter-cyclical firm sales dispersions consistent with the data. The resulting input misallocation amplifies both the volatility and persistence of the aggregate productivity shocks driving the business cycle.

Keywords: Business Cycle; Customer Capital; Entry and Exit; Markup Cyclicality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E32 L11 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2017-04-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dge and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2017.033

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