Shock Propagation and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mandel, Antoine, Veetil, Vipin P.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Mandel, Antoine
Veetil, Vipin P.
author_facet Mandel, Antoine
Veetil, Vipin P.
contents We study how idiosyncratic firm-level shocks generate aggregate volatility and tail risk when they propagate through a production network under overlapping adjustment: new productivity draws arrive before the economy reaches the static equilibrium associated with earlier draws. Each innovation generates a `productivity wave' that mixes and dissipates over time as it travels through the production network. Macroeconomic fluctuations emerge from the interference between these waves of different vintages. The interference between these waves is governed by the dominant transient eigenvalue of the production network, and therefore so is the macroeconomic fluctuations they generate. In such a dynamic regime, the tail of the degree distribution is a markedly weaker determinant of macro fluctuations than in the fully adjusted static benchmark. And the macroeconomic significance of the degree-heterogeneity of production networks cannot be known without knowing the rate at which the economy converges to equilibrium or equivalently the spectral properties of the production network. More concretely, once we permit the time-averaging of shocks, granular shocks may account for only a small fraction of the empirically observed aggregate volatility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_05367
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Shock Propagation and Macroeconomic Fluctuations
Mandel, Antoine
Veetil, Vipin P.
Theoretical Economics
Social and Information Networks
We study how idiosyncratic firm-level shocks generate aggregate volatility and tail risk when they propagate through a production network under overlapping adjustment: new productivity draws arrive before the economy reaches the static equilibrium associated with earlier draws. Each innovation generates a `productivity wave' that mixes and dissipates over time as it travels through the production network. Macroeconomic fluctuations emerge from the interference between these waves of different vintages. The interference between these waves is governed by the dominant transient eigenvalue of the production network, and therefore so is the macroeconomic fluctuations they generate. In such a dynamic regime, the tail of the degree distribution is a markedly weaker determinant of macro fluctuations than in the fully adjusted static benchmark. And the macroeconomic significance of the degree-heterogeneity of production networks cannot be known without knowing the rate at which the economy converges to equilibrium or equivalently the spectral properties of the production network. More concretely, once we permit the time-averaging of shocks, granular shocks may account for only a small fraction of the empirically observed aggregate volatility.
title Shock Propagation and Macroeconomic Fluctuations
topic Theoretical Economics
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05367