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I develop a highly tractable general equilibrium model in which heterogeneous producers face collateral constraints, and study the effect of financial frictions on capital misallocation and aggregate productivity. My economy is isomorphic to a Solow model but with time-varying TFP. I argue that the persistence of idiosyncratic productivity shocks determines both the size of steady-state productivity losses and the speed of transitions: if shocks are persistent, steady-state losses are small but transitions are slow. Even if financial frictions are unimportant in the long run, they tend to matter in the short run and analyzing steady states only can be misleading. (JEL E21, E22, E23, G32, L26, O16)

Auf politischen Landkarten werden für gewöhnlich aneinandergrenzende Länder mit unterschiedlichen Farben gefärbt. Allerdings haben durchaus verschiedene Länder die gleiche Farbe, wenn sie keine gemeinsame Grenze haben. Doch wie viele verschiedene Farben benötigt man mindestens, um eine Karte nach diesen Regeln zu färben? Die beiden Mathematiker Appel und Haken haben gezeigt, dass für jede Landkarte in der Ebene immer vier Farben ausreichen. Dieser Beweis kommt allerdings nicht ohne intensiven Computereinsatz aus.

We revisit the transmission mechanism from monetary policy to household consumption in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. The model yields empirically realistic distributions of wealth and marginal propensities to consume because of two features: uninsurable income shocks and multiple assets with different degrees of liquidity and different returns. In this environment, the indirect effects of an unexpected cut in interest rates, which operate through a general equilibrium increase in labor demand, far outweigh direct effects such as intertemporal substitution. This finding is in stark contrast to small- and medium-scale Representative Agent New Keynesian (RANK) economies, where the substitution channel drives virtually all of the transmission from interest rates to consumption. Failure of Ricardian equivalence implies that, in HANK models, the fiscal reaction to the monetary expansion is a key determinant of the overall size of the macroeconomic response. (JEL D31, E12, E21, E24, E43, E52, E62)