Search Results
Working Paper
The Postpandemic U.S. Immigration Surge: New Facts and Inflationary Implications
The U.S. experienced an extraordinary postpandemic surge in unauthorized immigration. This paper combines administrative data on border encounters and immigration court records with household survey data to document two new facts about these immigrants: They tend to be hand-to-mouth consumers and low-skilled workers that complement the existing workforce. We build these features into a model with capital, household heterogeneity and population growth to study the inflationary effects of this episode. Contrary to the popular view, we find little effect on inflation, as the increase in supply ...
Surging population growth from immigration may have little effect on inflation
U.S. population growth increased sharply recently following to a wave of immigration. This article examines what this surprise immigration surge could mean for the macroeconomy.
Report
The Interaction and Sequencing of Policy Reforms
In what order should a developing country adopt policy reforms? Do some policies complement each other? Do others substitute for each other? To address these questions, we develop a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with entry and exit of firms that are monopolistic competitors. Distortions in the model include barriers to entry of firms, barriers to international trade, and barriers to contract enforcement. We find that a reform that reduces one of these distortions has different effects depending on the other distortions present. In particular, reforms to trade barriers and ...
Journal Article
Mexico’s productivity woes limit nearshoring, growth potential
Industrial policy reform, nearshoring and a deeper Mexico–U.S. partnership could provide tailwinds for Mexican economic growth. Whether Mexico can harness the full potential of such transformative change is less clear.
Working Paper
Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World
We characterize optimal climate policy in an economy with heterogeneous households and non-homothetic preferences. We focus on constrained efficiency, where the planner is restricted from transferring resources across households. We derive three results. First, the constrained-optimal carbon tax is heterogeneous and progressive. Second, if restricted to a uniform tax, the optimal rate is lower than the standard Pigouvian level due to inequality. Third, this allocation can be decentralized using only uniform instruments—a carbon tax, a clean subsidy and a lump-sum transfer. In a quantitative ...
Working Paper
On the Distributional Effects of International Tariffs
We provide a quantitative analysis of the distributional effects of the 2018 increase in tariffs by the US and its major trading partners. We build a trade model with incomplete asset markets and households that are heterogeneous in their age, income, wealth, and labor skill. When tariff revenues are used to reduce distortionary taxes on consumption, labor, and capital income, the average welfare loss from the trade war is equivalent to a permanent 0.1 percent reduction in consumption. Much larger welfare losses are concentrated among retirees and low-wealth households, while only wealthy ...
Korea, Japan growth experiences suggest China’s economy to slow in next 20 years
The Chinese economy has grown at an unprecedented pace since the 1980s. However, the pace of growth is likely to slow as China’s economy matures because of its demographic structure and its increasing proximity to economic and technological frontiers.
Report
Firm Entry and Exit and Aggregate Growth
Using data from Chile and Korea, we find that a larger fraction of aggregate productivity growth is due to firm entry and exit during fast-growth episodes compared to slow-growth episodes. Studies of other countries confirm this empirical relationship. We develop a model of endogenous firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992). Firms enter with efficiencies drawn from a distribution whose mean grows over time. After entering, a firm?s efficiency grows with age. In the calibrated model, reducing entry costs or barriers to technology adoption generates the pattern we document in the data. ...
Working Paper
The Distributional Effects of COVID-19 and Optimal Mitigation Policies
This paper develops a quantitative heterogeneous agent–life cycle model with a fully integrated epidemiological model in which economic decisions affect the spread of COVID-19 and, conversely, the virus affects economic decisions. The calibrated model is used to study the distributional consequences and effectiveness of two mitigation policies: a stay-at-home subsidy that subsidizes reduced hours worked and a stay-at-home order that limits outside hours. First, the stay-at-home subsidy is preferred because it reduces deaths by more and output by less, leading to a larger average welfare ...
Working Paper
Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World
We study climate policy in an economy with heterogeneous households, two types of goods (clean and dirty), and a climate externality from the dirty good. Using household expenditure and emissions data, we document that low-income households have higher emissions per dollar spent than high-income households, making a carbon tax regressive. We build a model that captures this fact and study climate policies that are neutral with respect to the income distribution. A central feature of these policies is that resource transfers across consumers are ruled out. We show that the constrained optimal ...