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Working Paper
Using Brexit to Identify the Nature of Price Rigidities
Using price quote data that underpin the official U.K. consumer price index (CPI), we analyze the effects of the unexpected passing of the Brexit referendum to the dynamics of price adjustments. The sizable depreciation of the British pound that immediately followed Brexit works as a quasi-experiment, enabling us to study the transmission of a large common marginal cost shock to inflation as well as the distribution of prices within granular product categories. A large portion of the inflationary effect is attributable to the size of price adjustments, implying that a time-dependent ...
Working Paper
Relative Price Dispersion: Evidence and Theory
We use a large dataset on retail pricing to document that a sizable portion of the cross-sectional variation in the price at which the same good trades in the same period and in the same market is due to the fact that stores that are, on average, equally expensive set persistently different prices for the same good. We refer to this phenomenon as relative price dispersion. We argue that relative price dispersion stems from sellers? attempts to discriminate between high-valuation buyers who need to make all of their purchases in the same store and low-valuation buyers who are willing to ...
Report
Who bears the cost of a change in the exchange rate? The case of imported beer
This paper quantifies the welfare effects of a change in the nominal exchange rate using the example of the beer market. I estimate a structural econometric model that makes it possible to compute manufacturers' and retailers' pass-through of a nominal exchange-rate change, without observing wholesale prices or firms' marginal costs. I conduct counterfactual experiments to quantify how the change affects domestic and foreign firms' profits and domestic consumer welfare. The counterfactual experiments show that foreign manufacturers bear more of the cost of an exchange-rate change than do ...
Report
Misinformation in Social Media: The Role of Verification Incentives
We develop a model in which the prevalence and sharing of misinformation endogenously arise from the interaction between (i) users’ decisions to verify and share news of unknown truthfulness and (ii) producers’ choices to generate fake content. We use the model to examine how policies intended to combat misinformation affect users’ incentives to engage in costly news verification. Via this channel, unintended effects may emerge from: lowering verification costs borne by users; disrupting the supply of fake content; and introducing imperfect filters. We provide sensitivity measures, akin ...
Working Paper
Beyond the Doomsday Economics of “Proof-of-Work” in Cryptocurrencies
This paper discusses the economics of how Bitcoin achieves data immutability, and thus payment finality, via costly computations, i.e., ?proof-of-work.? Further, it explores what the future might hold for cryptocurrencies modelled on this type of consensus algorithm. The conclusions are, first, that Bitcoin counterfeiting via ?double-spending? attacks is inherently profitable, making payment finality based on proof-of-work extremely expensive. Second, the transaction market cannot generate an adequate level of ?mining? income via fees as users free-ride on the fees of other transactions in a ...
Working Paper
Collateralized Debt Networks with Lender Default
The Lehman Brothers' 2008 bankruptcy spread losses to its counterparties even when Lehman was a lender of cash, because collateral for that lending was tied up in the bankruptcy process. I study the implications of such lender default using a general equilibrium network model featuring endogenous leverage, endogenous asset prices, and endogenous network formation. The multiplex graph model has two channels of contagion: a counterparty channel of contagion and a price channel of contagion through endogenous collateral price. Borrowers diversify their lenders because of the counterparty risk, ...
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Implications of Uniform Pricing
We compile a new database of grocery prices in Argentina. We find uniform pricing both within and across regions—i.e., prices almost do not vary within stores of a chain. In line with uniform pricing, prices in stores of chains operating in one region react to changes in regional employment, while prices in multi-region chains do not. Using a quantitative regional model with multi-region firms and uniform pricing, we find a one-half smaller elasticity of prices to a regional than an aggregate shock. This result highlights that some caution may be necessary when using regional shocks to ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Requirements, Free-Riding, and the Implications for Financial Stability Evidence from the Early 1900s
Maintaining sufficient liquidity in the financial system is vital for financial stability. However, since returns on liquid assets are typically low, individual financial institutions may seek to hold fewer such assets, especially if they believe they can rely on other institutions for liquidity support. We examine whether state banks in the early 1900s took advantage of relatively high cash balances maintained by national banks, due to reserve requirements, to hold less cash themselves. We find that state banks did hold less cash in places where both state legal requirements were lower and ...
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Implications of Uniform Pricing
We compile a new database of grocery prices in Argentina. We find uniform pricing both within and across regions—i.e., prices almost do not vary within stores of a chain. In line with uniform pricing, prices in stores of chains operating in one region react to changes in regional employment, while prices in multi-region chains do not. Using a quantitative regional model with multi-region firms and uniform pricing, we find a one-half smaller elasticity of prices to a regional than an aggregate shock. This result highlights that some caution may be necessary when using regional shocks to ...
Working Paper
Relative price dispersion: evidence and theory
REVISED: 8/1/18: We use a large data set on retail pricing to document that a sizable portion of the cross-sectional variation in the price at which the same good trades in the same period and in the same market is due to the fact that stores that are, on average, equally expensive set persistently different prices for the same good. We refer to this phenomenon as relative price dispersion. We argue that relative price dispersion stems from sellers? attempts to discriminate between high-valuation buyers who need to make all of their purchases in the same store and low-valuation buyers who are ...