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Working Paper
Uninsured risk, stagnation, and fiscal policy
Japan is in the midst of a protracted spell of depressed economic activity. Japan's economic stagnation has occurred against a background of rising earnings risk. Occupational stability is falling as routine occupations disappear and implicit lifetime employment guarantees are gradually disappearing. At the same time, earnings in some high-skilled occupations have continued to grow. The resulting polarization in earnings has also been accompanied by an increase in wealth inequality. We develop a framework that relates these observations. In our model, an increase in uninsured earnings risk ...
Working Paper
A moment-matching method for approximating vector autoregressive processes by finite-state Markov chains
This paper proposes a moment-matching method for approximating vector autoregressions by finite-state Markov chains. The Markov chain is constructed by targeting the conditional moments of the underlying continuous process. The proposed method is more robust to the number of discrete values and tends to outperform the existing methods for approximating multivariate processes over a wide range of the parameter space, especially for highly persistent vector autoregressions with roots near the unit circle.
Working Paper
Synergizing Ventures
Venture capital (VC) and growth are examined both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, VC-backed startups have higher early growth rates and initial patent quality than non-VC-backed ones. VC backing increases a startup's likelihood of reaching the right tails of the firm size and innovation distributions. Furthermore, outcomes are better for startups matched with more experienced venture capitalists. An endogenous growth model, where venture capitalists provide both expertise and financing for business startups, is constructed to match these facts. The presence of venture capital, the ...
Working Paper
The Downward Spiral
To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov chains are estimated from the US data for the college and non–college educated that summarize the transitions into and out of opioid addiction as well as to a deadly overdose. We construct a structural model that matches the estimated Markov chains. We also examine the epidemic’s drivers and the impact of medical interventions.
Working Paper
The Expansion of Varieties in the New Age of Advertising
The last decades have seen large improvements in digital advertising technology that allowed firms to better target specific consumer tastes. This research studies the relationship among digital advertising, the rise of varieties, and economic welfare. We develop a model of advertising and varieties where firms choose the intensity of digital ads directed at specific consumers as well as traditional ads that are undirected. The calibrated model shows that improvements in digital advertising have driven the rise in varieties over time. Empirical evidence is presented using detailed micro data ...
Working Paper
The Real Effects of Monetary Shocks: Evidence from Micro Pricing Moments
This paper evaluates the informativeness of eight micro pricing moments for monetary non-neutrality. Frequency of price changes is the only robustly informative moment. The ratio of kurtosis over frequency is significant only because of frequency, and insignificant when non-pricing moments are included. Non-pricing moments are additionally informative about monetary non-neutrality, indicating potential omitted variable bias and the inability of pricing moments to serve as sufficient statistics. In contrast to existing theoretical work, this ratio has an ambiguous relationship with monetary ...
Working Paper
Mis-specified Forecasts and Myopia in an Estimated New Keynesian Model
The paper considers a New Keynesian framework in which agents form expectations based on a combination of autoregressive mis-specified forecasts and myopia. The proposed expectations formation process is shown to be consistent with all three empirical facts on consensus inflation forecasts. However, while mis-specified forecasts can be both sufficient and necessary to match all three facts, myopia alone is neither. The paper then derives the general equilibrium solution consistent with the proposed expectations formation process and estimates the model with likelihood-based Bayesian methods, ...
Working Paper
Mis-specified Forecasts and Myopia in an Estimated New Keynesian Model
The paper considers a New Keynesian framework in which agents form expectations based on a combination of mis-specified forecasts and myopia. The proposed expectations formation process is found to be consistent with all three empirical facts on consensus inflation forecasts, namely, that forecasters under-react to ex-ante forecast revisions, that forecasters over-react to recent events, and that the response of forecast errors to a shock initially under-shoots but then over-shoots. The paper then derives the general equilibrium solution consistent with the proposed expectations formation ...
Working Paper
The Downward Spiral: A Macroeconomic Analysis of the Opioid Crisis
There have been more than 700,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, a model is constructed where individuals choose whether to use opioids recreationally, knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of recreational opioid usage. The model is fit to estimated Markov chains from the US data that summarize the transitions into and out of opioid addiction as well as to a deadly overdose. The epidemic is broken down into two subperiods: 2000-2010 and 2010-2019. The opioid epidemic's drivers, their impact on employment, and the impact ...
Working Paper
How Times Have Changed: The Impact of the 2026 Iran War on the U.S. Economy
The 2026 Iran war has raised the question of how exposed the U.S. economy is to geopolitical oil supply disruptions. It is widely believed that the U.S. economy has become less vulnerable to such disruptions as it has reduced its dependence on oil and changed from a major net oil importer to a net oil exporter. We develop a two-country model of the global economy with large geopolitical oil supply disruptions that distinguishes between the U.S. economy and the rest of the world. We find that the response of U.S. real GDP growth to the disruption in global oil supplies today is only ...