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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. Studies of other countries confirm this empirical relationship. To analyze this relationship, we develop a simple model of firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992) in which there are analytical expressions for the FHK decomposition. When we introduce reforms that reduce entry costs or reduce barriers to technology adoption ...
Working Paper
Modeling the dynamic impact of North American free trade
The current tool of choice for analyzing the impact of a potential North American Free Trade Agreement on the economies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States is the static applied general equilibrium model. Although this type of model can do a good job in analyzing, and even in predicting, the impact of trade liberalization or tax reform on relative prices and resource allocation over a short time horizon, it does not attempt to capture the impact of government policy on growth rates. For this we need a dynamic model. This paper outlines some of the issues that confront a researcher ...
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 ...
Report
Using the new products margin to predict the industry-level impact of trade reform
This paper develops a methodology for predicting the impact of trade liberalization on exports by industry (3-digit ISIC) based on the pre-liberalization distribution of exports by product (5-digit SITC). Using the results of Kehoe and Ruhl (2013) that much of the growth in trade after trade liberalization is in products that are traded very little or not at all, we predict that industries with a higher share of exports generated by least traded products will experience more growth. Using our methodology, we develop predictions for industry-level changes in trade for the United States and ...
Report
Gambling for redemption and self-fulfilling debt crises
We develop a model for analyzing the sovereign debt crises of 2010?2012 in the Eurozone. The government sets its expenditure-debt policy optimally. The need to sell large quantities of bonds every period leaves the government vulnerable to self-fulfilling crises in which investors, anticipating a crisis, are unwilling to buy the bonds, thereby provoking the crisis. In this situation, the optimal policy of the government is to reduce its debt to a level where crises are not possible. If, however, the economy is in a recession where there is a positive probability of recovery in fiscal ...
Report
Are shocks to the terms of trade shocks to productivity?
International trade is frequently thought of as a production technology in which the inputs are> exports and the outputs are imports. Exports are transformed into imports at the rate of the price> of exports relative to the price of imports: the reciprocal of the terms of trade. Cast this way, a> change in the terms of trade acts as a productivity shock. Or does it? In this paper, we show that> this line of reasoning cannot work in standard models. Starting with a simple model and then> generalizing, we show that changes in the terms of trade have no first-order effect on> productivity when ...
Journal Article
Decades lost and found: Mexico and Chile since 1980
Both Chile and Mexico experienced severe economic crises in the early 1980s, yet Chile recovered much faster than Mexico. This study analyzes four possible explanations for this difference and rules out three, explanations based on money supply expansion, real wage and real exchange rate declines, and foreign debt overhangs. The fourth explanation is based on government policy reforms in the two countries. Using growth accounting and a calibrated growth model, the study determines that the only policy reforms promising as explanations are those that primarily affect total factor productivity, ...
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. Studies of other countries confirm this empirical relationship. To analyze this relationship, we develop a simple model of firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992) in which there are analytical expressions for the FHK decomposition. When we introduce reforms that reduce entry costs or reduce barriers to technology adoption ...
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 ...