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Series:Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 

Working Paper
Doves for the Rich, Hawks for the Poor? Distributional Consequences of Systematic Monetary Policy

We build a New Keynesian business-cycle model with rich household heterogeneity. In the model, systematic monetary stabilization policy affects the distribution of income, income risks, and the demand for funds and supply of assets: the demand, because matching frictions render idiosyncratic labor-market risk endogenous; the supply, because markups, adjustment costs, and the tax system mean that the average profitability of firms is endogenous. Disagreement about systematic monetary stabilization policy is pronounced. The wealth-rich or retired tend to favor inflation targeting. The ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 50

Working Paper
Mispricing Narratives after Social Unrest

We study how negative sentiment around an industry impacts beliefs and behaviors, focusing on demands for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd and the salience of the “defund the police” movement. We assess stakeholder beliefs on the impact of protests on the stock prices of police-affiliated firms. In our survey experiment, laypeople and finance professionals predicted more negative stock price outcomes when they lacked details on the products supplied by such firms. Exposure to narratives about the context of the protests further reduced the prediction accuracy of these ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 096

Working Paper
Firm-Embedded Productivity and Cross-Country Income Differences

We measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity we refer to the components of productivity that differ across firms and that can be transferred internationally, such as blueprints, management practices, and intangible capital. Our approach relies on microlevel data on the cross-border operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We compare the market shares of the exact same MNE in different countries and document that they are about four times larger in developing than in high-income countries. This finding ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 39

Working Paper
Market Size and Trade in Medical Services

We measure the importance of increasing returns to scale and trade in medical services. Using Medicare claims data, we document that “imported” medical care—services produced by a medical provider in a different region—constitute about one-fifth of US healthcare consumption. Larger regions specialize in producing less common procedures, which are traded more. These patterns reflect economies of scale: larger regions produce higher-quality services because they serve more patients. Because of increasing returns and trade costs, policies to improve access to care face a ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 068

Working Paper
Peer Effects and Marriage Formation

A large literature links marriage to later life outcomes for children and adults. Marriage has declined markedly in the U.S. over the last 50 years, particularly among individuals with less than a baccalaureate degree, yet the causes of the decline are not well understood. In this paper we provide causal evidence on one potential mechanism for the observed marriage rate patterns: peer effects. We use administrative personnel data from the U.S. Army to study how peers influence marriage decisions for junior enlisted soldiers arriving to their first assignment from 2001-2018, a setting which ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 107

Working Paper
Minimum Wages, Efficiency and Welfare

It has long been argued that a minimum wage could alleviate efficiency losses from monopsony power. In a general equilibrium framework that quantitatively replicates results from recent empirical studies, we find higher minimum wages can improve welfare, but most welfare gains stem from redistribution rather than efficiency. Our model features oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms and yields analytical expressions that characterize the mechanisms by which minimum wages can improve efficiency, and how these deteriorate at higher minimum wages. We provide a method to ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 058

Working Paper
Why is Trade Not Free? A Revealed Preference Approach

A prominent explanation for why trade is not free is politicians’ desire to protect some of their constituents at the expense of others. In this paper we develop a methodology that can be used to reveal the welfare weights that a nation’s import tariffs implicitly place on different groups of society. Applied in the context of the United States in 2017, this method implies that redistributive trade protection accounts for a significant fraction of US tariff variation and causes large monetary transfers between US individuals, mostly driven by differences in welfare weights across sectors ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 089

Working Paper
Why Do Couples and Singles Save During Retirement?

While the savings of retired singles tend to fall with age, those of retired couples tend to rise. We estimate a rich model of retired singles and couples with bequest motives and uncertain longevity and medical expenses. Our estimates imply that while medical expenses are an important driver of the savings of middle-income singles, bequest motives matter for couples and high-income singles, and generate transfers to non-spousal heirs whenever a household member dies. The interaction of medical expenses and bequest motives is a crucial determinant of savings for all retirees. Hence, to ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 49

Working Paper
Heterogeneous Workers and Federal Income Taxes in a Spatial Equilibrium

This paper studies the incidence and efficiency of a progressive income tax in a spatial equilibrium. We use US census data to estimate an empirical spatial equilibrium with heterogeneous workers, landowners, and firms. The US income tax shifts skilled workers out of high-productivity cities, leading to a deadweight loss of 2% of tax revenue. Flattening the tax schedule significantly increases welfare inequality between skilled and unskilled workers and does not increase overall worker welfare, as the efficiency gains are captured by landowners. This suggests that progressive income taxes ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 3

Working Paper
The City Paradox: Skilled Services and Remote Work

Large cities in the US are the most expensive places to live. Paradoxically, this cost is paid disproportionately by workers who could work remotely, and live anywhere. The greater potential for remote work in large cities is mostly accounted for by their specialization in skill- and information-intensive service industries. We highlight that this specialization makes these cities vulnerable to remote work shocks. When high-skill workers begin to work from home or leave the city altogether, they withdraw spending from local consumer service industries that rely heavily on their demand. As a ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 43

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