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Report
Trade, growth, and convergence in a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model
In models in which convergence in income levels across closed countries is driven by faster accumulation of a productive factor in the poorer countries, opening these countries to trade can stop convergence and even cause divergence. We make this point using a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model ? a combination of a static two-good, two-factor Heckscher-Ohlin trade model and a two-sector growth model ? with infinitely lived consumers where international borrowing and lending are not permitted. We obtain two main results: First, countries that differ only in their initial endowments of capital per ...
Journal Article
The current financial crisis: what should we learn from the great depressions of the 20th Century?
Essay from the 2008 Annual Report.
Discussion Paper
The Stages of Economic Growth Revisited, Part 2: Catching Up to and Joining the Economic Leader
Rostow (1960) hypothesized that taking off into economic growth was a difficult task for countries in the 19th century, requiring major changes in institutions. In the 20th century, however, as the United States and other advanced countries became richer because of improvements in technologies and managerial practices, it became easier for poor countries to take off into rapid growth by adopting some of these improvements. {{p}} We hypothesize that, while taking off is now easier, the difficult transition is now from take-off to catch-up, where nations grow closer to the economic leader (now ...
Report
Self-fulfilling debt crises
We characterize the values of government debt and the debt's maturity structure under which financial crises brought on by a loss of confidence in the government can arise within a dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model. We also characterize the optimal policy response of the government to the threat of such a crisis. We show that when the country's fundamentals place it inside the crisis zone, the government is motivated to reduce its debt and exit the crisis zone because this leads to an economic boom and a reduction in the interest rate on the government's debt. We show that this ...
Working Paper
Catch-up growth followed by stagnation: Mexico, 1950–2010
In 1950 Mexico entered an economic takeoff and grew rapidly for more than 30 years. Growth stopped during the crises of 1982?1995, despite major reforms, including liberalization of foreign trade and investment. Since then growth has been modest. We analyze the economic history of Mexico 1877? 2010. We conclude that the growth 1950?1981 was driven by urbanization, industrialization, and education and that Mexico would have grown even more rapidly if trade and investment had been liberalized sooner. If Mexico is to resume rapid growth ? so that it can approach U.S. levels of income ? it needs ...
Journal Article
Capturing NAFTA's impact with applied general equilibrium models
We examine the results of four static applied general equilibrium (AGE) modeling teams' analyses of the effects of NAFTA. What they show is that Mexico's economy, because it's the smallest, will see the biggest NAFTA-produced increase in economic welfare: from 2 to 5 percent of GDP. The U.S. welfare increase will be small, around 0.1 percent of GDP; Canada will notice no welfare increase due to NAFTA. We then discuss two examples of dynamic phenomena?labor force adjustment and capital flows?which are likely to influence NAFTA's welfare impact, but that aren't easy to incorporate into static ...
Working Paper
Firm Entry and Exit and Aggregate Growth
Applying the Foster, Haltiwanger and Krizan (FHK) (2001) decomposition to plant-level manufacturing data from Chile and Korea, we find that the entry and exit of plants account for a larger fraction of aggregate productivity growth during periods of fast GDP growth. To analyze this relationship, we develop a model of firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992). When we introduce reforms that reduce entry costs or reduce barriers to technology adoption into a calibrated model, we find that the entry and exit terms in the FHK decomposition become more important as GDP grows rapidly, just as ...
Report
Constructing Pure-Exchange Economies with Many Equilibria
We develop a restart algorithm based on Scarf’s (1973) algorithm for computing approximate Brouwer fixed points. We use the algorithm to compute all of the equilibria of a general equilibrium pure-exchange model with four consumers, four goods, and 15 equilibria. The mathematical result that motivates the algorithm is a fixed-point index theorem that provides a sufficient condition for uniqueness of equilibrium and a necessary condition for multiplicity of equilibria. Examining the structure of the model with 15 equilibria provides us with a method for constructing higher dimensional models ...
Journal Article
A primer on static applied general equilibrium models
In this paper, we describe and analyze the basic structure of the applied general equilibrium (AGE) models used to assess the effects of government trade policies. Once we have constructed the basic model, we extend it to cover features such as increasing returns to scale, imperfect competition, and differentiated products, following the AGE modeling trend of the past 10 years. We then compare a static AGE model's predictions with the actual data on how Spain was affected by entering the European Community and find that, when exogenous effects are included, a static AGE model's predictions ...
Report
An evaluation of the performance of applied general equilibrium models of the impact of NAFTA
This paper evaluates the performances of three of the most prominent multisectoral static applied general equilibrium models used to predict the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement. These models drastically underestimated the impact of NAFTA on North American trade. Furthermore, the models failed to capture much of the relative impacts on different sectors. Ex-post performance evaluations of applied GE models are essential if policymakers are to have confidence in the results produced by these models. Such valuations also help make applied GE analysis a scientific discipline in ...