May 2023 - Working Paper31231 Consumer surplus, the area between the demand curve and the price, plays a key role in many models of trade and growth. Quantifying it typically requires estimating and extrapolating demand curves. This paper provides an alternative approach to measuring consumer surplus by focusing on firms as...
May 2022 - Working Paper30037 We provide a price theory for incomplete markets that extends the traditional Walrasian analysis. We derive formulas expressing the consumption response to current and future changes in interest rates and income. Our analysis provides a natural decomposition of these responses into substitution and...
January 2021 - Working Paper28346 The Covid-19 crisis is an unusual and seemingly all-encompassing economic shock. On the one hand, it was unquestionably a negative demand shock that, for fixed prices and incomes, reduced household spending. On the other hand, it was also unquestionably a negative supply shock that reduced firms'...
January 2021 - Working Paper28345 We propose a supply-side channel for the transmission of monetary policy. We show that in an economy with heterogeneous firms and endogenous markups, demand shocks such as monetary shocks have a first-order effect on aggregate productivity. If high-markup firms have lower pass-throughs than low...
June 2020 - Working Paper27281 We study the effects of negative supply shocks and shocks to the composition of final demand on aggregate output in a disaggregated neoclassical model with multiple sectors, factors, and input-output linkages. We show how nonlinearities associated with complementarities in consumption and production...
May 2020 - Working Paper27244 We use a five-age epidemiological model, combined with 66-sector economic accounting, to address a variety of questions concerning the economic reopening. We calibrate/estimate the model using contact survey data and data on weekly historical individual actions and non-pharmaceutical interventions...
May 2020 - Working Paper27152 We study supply and demand shocks in a disaggregated model with multiple sectors, multiple factors, input-output linkages, downward nominal wage rigidities, credit-constraints, and a zero lower bound. We use the model to understand how the Covid-19 crisis, an omnibus supply and demand shock, affects...
May 2020 - Working Paper27139 How does an increase in market size, say due to globalization, affect welfare? We study this question using a model with monopolistic competition, heterogeneous markups, and fixed costs. We characterize changes in welfare and decompose changes in allocative efficiency into three different effects:...
May 2020 - Working Paper27140 We characterize the response of aggregate output to micro shocks in disaggregated economies with entry, non-constant returns to scale, input-output linkages, and distortions. We decompose output changes into technical and allocative eciency components, and show that the latter depends on changes in...
July 2019 - Working Paper26108 We study a flexible class of trade models with international production networks and arbitrary wedge-like distortions like markups, tariffs, or nominal rigidities. We characterize the general equilibrium response of variables to shocks in terms of microeconomic statistics. Our results are useful for...
March 2019 - Working Paper25688 This paper discusses two simple decompositions for aggregate productivity analysis in the presence of distortions and in general equilibrium. The first is a generalization of Baqaee and Farhi (2017) and the second is due to Petrin and Levinsohn (2012). In the process, we propose a new distorted...
January 2019 - Working Paper25469 Currently both the International Monetary System (IMS) and the International Price Systems (IPS) are dominated by the U.S. The emergence of China, both as reserve currency and as a currency of invoicing, is likely to disrupt this status quo. We provide a framework to understand the forces that will...
November 2018 - Working Paper25282 Real risk-free interest rates have trended down over the past 30 years. Puzzlingly in light of this decline, (1) the return on private capital has remained stable or even increased, creating an increasing wedge with safe interest rates; (2) stock market valuation ratios have increased only...
November 2018 - Working Paper25293 Aggregate production functions are reduced-form relationships that emerge endogenously from input-output interactions between heterogeneous producers and factors in general equilibrium. We provide a general methodology for analyzing such aggregate production functions by deriving their first- and...
June 2018 - Working Paper24684 The goal of this paper is to simultaneously unbundle two interacting reduced-form building blocks of traditional macroeconomic models: the representative agent and the aggregate production function. We introduce a broad class of disaggregated general equilibrium models with Heterogeneous Agents and...
June 2018 - Working Paper24702 We analyze the dynamic macroeconomic effects of border adjustment taxes, both when they are a feature of corporate tax reform (C-BAT) and for the case of value added taxes (VAT). Our analysis arrives at the following main conclusions. First, C-BAT is unlikely to be neutral at the macroeconomic level...
May 30, 2018 - Chapter
We analyze the dynamic macroeconomic effects of border adjustment taxes, both when they are a feature of corporate tax reform (C-BAT) and for the case of value added taxes (VAT). Our analysis arrives at the following main conclusions. First, C-BAT is unlikely to be neutral at the macroeconomic level...
November 2017 - Working Paper24007 This paper develops a general theory of aggregation in inecient economies. We provide non-parametric formulas for aggregating microeconomic shocks in economies with distortions such as taxes, markups, frictions to resource reallocation, financial frictions, and nominal rigidities. We allow for...
October 2017 - Working Paper23930 Traditional banking is built on four pillars: SME lending, insured deposit taking, access to lender of last resort, and prudential supervision. This paper unveils the logic of the quadrilogy by showing that it emerges naturally as an equilibrium outcome in a game between banks and the government. A...
March 2017 - Working Paper23281 This paper extends the benchmark New-Keynesian model by introducing two frictions: (1) agent heterogeneity with incomplete markets, uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, and occasionally binding borrowing constraints; and (2) bounded rationality in the form of level-k thinking. Compared to the benchmark...
February 2017 - Working Paper23145 We provide a nonlinear characterization of the macroeconomic impact of microeconomic productivity shocks in terms of reduced-form non-parametric elasticities for efficient economies. We also show how microeconomic parameters are mapped to these reduced-form general equilibrium elasticities. In this...
February 2017 - Working Paper23127 The secular decline in safe interest rates since the early 1980s has been the subject of considerable attention. In this short paper, we argue that it is important to consider the evolution of safe real rates in conjunction with three other first-order macroeconomic stylized facts: the relative...
May 2016 - Working Paper22295 We propose a simple model of the international monetary system. We study the world supply and demand for reserve assets denominated in different currencies under a variety of scenarios: a Hegemon vs. a multipolar world; abundant vs. scarce reserve assets; a gold exchange standard vs. a floating rate...
February 2016 - Working Paper22044 We explore the consequences of safe asset scarcity on aggregate demand in a stylized IS-LM/Mundell Fleming environment. Acute safe asset scarcity forces the economy into a safety trap recession. In the open economy, safe asset scarcity spreads from one country to the other via capital flows,...
January 2016 - Working Paper21843 The recent unravelling of the Eurozone's financial integration raised concerns about feedback loops between sovereign and banking insolvency. This paper provides a theory of the feedback loop that allows for both domestic bailouts of the banking system and sovereign debt forgiveness by international...
October 2015 - Working Paper21670 This paper explores the consequences of extremely low real interest rates in a world with integrated but heterogenous capital markets, nominal rigidities and an effective lower bound (a ZLB for simplicity). We establish four main results: (i) At the ZLB, creditor countries export their recession...
September 2015 - Working Paper21524 This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general behavioral framework that encompasses a wide range of behavioral biases such as misperceptions, internalities and mental accounting. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear commodity...
July 2014 - Working Paper20277 We characterize fiscal and monetary policy in a monetary union with the potential for rollover crises in sovereign debt markets. Member-country fiscal authorities lack commitment to repay their debt and choose fiscal policy independently. A common monetary authority chooses inflation for the union,...
May 2014 - Working Paper20105 We study the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities. When the demand shortfall in depressed region is mostly internal, migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment. When external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of...
February 2014 - Working Paper19927 In this paper we provide a model of the macroeconomic implications of safe asset shortages. In particular, we discuss the emergence of a deflationary safety trap equilibrium with endogenous risk premia. It is an acute form of a liquidity trap, in which the shortage of a specific form of assets, safe...
October 2013 - Working Paper19541 Though risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution have been the subjects of careful scrutiny when calibrating preferences, the long-run risks literature as well as the broader literature using recursive utility to address asset pricing puzzles have ignored the full implications...
October 2013 - Working Paper19516 We propose a continuous time model of nominal debt and investigate the role of inflation credibility in the potential for self-fulfilling debt crises. Inflation is costly, but reduces the real value of outstanding debt without the full punishment of default. With high inflation credibility, which...
August 2013 - Working Paper19313 We propose a theory of monetary policy and macroprudential interventions in financial markets. We focus on economies with nominal rigidities in goods and labor markets and subject to constraints on monetary policy, such as the zero lower bound or fixed exchange rates. We identify an aggregate demand...
February 2013 - Working Paper18792 We develop a theory of optimal estate taxation in a model where bequest inequality is driven by differences in parental altruism. We show that a wide range of results are possible, from positive taxes to subsidies, depending on redistributive objectives implicit in the cardinal specification of...
January 2013 - Working Paper18737 The global economy has a chronic shortage of safe assets which lies behind many recent macroeconomic imbalances. This paper provides a simple model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM), its recessionary safety traps, and its policy antidotes. Safety traps share many common features with conventional...
September 2012 - Working Paper18381 We provide explicit solutions for government spending multipliers during a liquidity trap and within a fixed exchange regime using standard closed and open-economy models. We confirm the potential for large multipliers during liquidity traps. For a currency union, we show that self-financed...
August 2012 - Working Paper18280 We study cross-country risk sharing as a second-best problem for members of a currency union using an open economy model with nominal rigidities and provide two key results. First, we show that if financial markets are incomplete, the value of gaining access to any given level of aggregate risk...
June 2012 - Working Paper18199 We lay down a standard macroeconomic model of a small open economy with a fixed exchange rate and study optimal capital controls (defined as maximizing the utility of a representative household). We provide sharp analytical and numerical characterizations for a variety of shocks. We find that...
May 2012 - Working Paper18072 In this paper, we use cross-industry, cross-country panel data to test whether industry growth is positively affected by the interaction between the reactivity of real short term interest rates to the business cycle and industry-level measures of financial constraints. Financial constraints are...
December 2011 - Working Paper17662 We show that even when the exchange rate cannot be devalued, a small set of conventional fiscal instruments can robustly replicate the real allocations attained under a nominal exchange rate devaluation in a dynamic New Keynesian open economy environment. We perform the analysis under alternative...
February 2011 - Working Paper16758 When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds, monetary policy cannot provide appropriate stimulus. We show that in the standard New Keynesian model, tax policy can deliver such stimulus at no cost and in a time-consistent manner. There is no need to use inefficient policies such as...
January 2011 - Working Paper16749 We consider a dynamic Mirrlees economy in a life cycle context and study the op- timal insurance arrangement. Individual productivity evolves as a Markov process and is private information. We use a first order approach in discrete and continuous time and obtain novel theoretical and numerical...
January 2011 - Working Paper16750 This paper analyzes the possibility and the consequences of rational bubbles in a dy- namic economy where financially constrained firms demand and supply liquidity. Bub- bles are more likely to emerge, the scarcer the supply of outside liquidity and the more limited the pledgeability of corporate...
July 2009 - Working Paper15138 The paper elicits a mechanism by which private leverage choices exhibit strategic complementarities through the reaction of monetary policy. When everyone engages in maturity transformation, authorities have little choice but facilitating refinancing. In turn, refusing to adopt a risky balance sheet...
June 2009 - Working Paper15062 Since the fall of 2008, option smiles have been clearly asymmetric: out-of-the-money currency options point to large expected exchange rate depreciations (appreciations) for high (low) interest rate currencies, suggesting that disaster risk is priced in currency markets. To study the price of...
December 2008 - Working Paper14521 In this paper we argue that the persistent global imbalances, the subprime crisis, and the volatile oil and asset prices that followed it, are tightly interconnected. They all stem from a global environment where sound and liquid financial assets are in scarce supply....
October 2008 - Working Paper14457 The sub-prime crisis has shown a harsh spotlight on the practices of securities underwriters, which provided too many complex securities that proved to ultimately have little value. This uproar calls attention to the fact that the literature on intermediaries has carefully analyzed their incentives,...
April 2008 - Working Paper13955 We explore the link between liquidity and investment in a an overlapping generation model with a standard asynchronicity between firms' access to and need for cash. Imperfect pledgeability hinders the capacity of capital markets to resolve this asynchronicity, resulting in credit rationing and a net...
February 2008 - Working Paper13805 We propose a new model of exchange rates, which yields a theory of the forward premium puzzle. Our explanation combines two ingredients: the possibility of rare economic disasters, and an asset view of the exchange rate. Our model is frictionless, has complete markets, and works for an arbitrary...
January 2008 - Working Paper13720 This paper derives an intertemporal optimality condition for economies with private information, focusing on a class of recursive preferences. By comparing it to the situation where agents can freely save in a risk-free asset market, we derive the optimal savings distortions necessary for...