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Journal Article
Heat versus Light: Fact-Checking the Debate over De-Risking
In this article, we examine the evidence for claims about the connection between bank derisking and anti–money laundering (AML) regulation. Specifically, we examine evidence for the claim that the cost of increased AML compliance and increasing bank fines have led to banks exiting entire sectors or geographical regions and that this de-risking is deeply damaging to economies. We draw onmultiple sources of evidence, including financial flow data, discourse and social media analysis, an evidentiary history, elite interviews, and participant observation. In the end, we find that substantial ...
Working Paper
Offshoring in Developing Countries: Labor Market Outcomes, Welfare, and Policy
Does a reduction in offshoring cost benefit workers in the world's factories in developing countries? Using a parsimonious two-country model of offshoring we find very nuanced results. These include cases where wages monotonically improve, worsen, as well as where wages exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with the offshoring cost. We identify qualitative conditions under which these relationships hold. Since global welfare always rises with an improvement in offshoring technology, we find that there is a role for a wage tax or a minimum wage in the developing country. We derive the ...
Working Paper
The Epidemic Effect: Epidemics, Institutions and Human Capital Development
Epidemics can negatively affect economic development unless they are mitigated by global governance institutions. We examine the effects of sudden exposure to epidemics on human capital outcomes using evidence from the African meningitis belt. Meningitis shocks reduce child health outcomes, particularly when the World Health Organization (WHO) does not declare an epidemic year. These effects are reversed when the WHO declares an epidemic year. Children born in meningitis shock areas in a year when an epidemic is declared are 10 percentage points (pp) less stunted and 8.2 pp less underweight ...
Journal Article
Heat versus Light: Fact-Checking the Debate over De-Risking
In this article, we examine the evidence for claims about the connection between bank de-risking and anti–money laundering (AML) regulation. Specifically, we examine evidence for the claim that the cost of increased AML compliance and increasing bank fines have led to banks exiting entire sectors or geographical regions and that this de-risking is deeply damaging to economies. We draw on multiple sources of evidence, including financial flow data, discourse and social media analysis, an evidentiary history, elite interviews, and participant observation. In the end, we find that substantial ...
Discussion Paper
Heat versus Light: Fact-Checking the Debate over De-Risking
In this article, we examine the evidence for claims about the connection between bank derisking and anti–money laundering (AML) regulation. Specifically, we examine evidence for the claim that the cost of increased AML compliance and increasing bank fines have led to banks exiting entire sectors or geographical regions and that this de-risking is deeply damaging to economies. We draw on multiple sources of evidence, including financial flow data, discourse and social media analysis, an evidentiary history, elite interviews, and participant observation. In the end, we find that substantial ...
Working Paper
On Terms of Trade, Offshoring Ties, and the Enforcement of Trade Agreements
This paper unpacks the role of offshoring in the enforcement of trade agreements. In a two-country model of task offshoring, we show that by depressing demand and thus demand for embodied labor, own-tariff effects on factor content weighted terms of trade are: (i) negative in upstream countries, backfiring on upstream workers, and (ii) positive in downstream countries which render imported labor tasks even cheaper. This progression in own-tariff effects on terms of trade along the supply chain presents a novel challenge to the effectiveness of dispute settlement rules designed to nullify ...
Working Paper
On Trade Policy Preference and Offshoring Ties
This paper unpacks the role of the domestic content of imports as a novel source of policy interdependence along the global supply chain. We show how a rise in local contents embodied in imports can skew national trade policy preferences, and pull upstream and downstream countries in asymmetric ways with respect to (i) the nature of unilaterally optimal trade policy prescriptions, and (ii) the attractiveness of leveraging market access-based dispute settlement procedures. We discuss the pros and cons of deep trade integration as a remedy, involving well-enforced labor standards both upstream ...
Working Paper
Argentina’s “Missing Capital” Puzzle and Limited Commitment Constraints
Capital accumulation in Argentina was slow in the 1990s, despite high total factor productivity (TFP) growth and low international interest rates. A possible explanation for the ?missing capital? is that foreign investors were reluctant to take advantage of the high returns to investment seemingly offered by that small open economy under such favorable conditions, on the grounds that previous historical developments had led them to perceive Argentina as a country prone to external debt ?opportunistic defaults.? The paper examines this conjecture from the perspective of an optimal contract ...
Working Paper
Export Tax Rebates and Resource Misallocation: Evidence from a Large Developing Country
The export tax rebate (ETR) policy is one of the most frequently used policy instruments by Chinese policy makers. This paper therefore provides a vital analysis of its allocation effects. To motivate our empirical analysis for the allocation effects of the ETR policy, we first add a tax rebate to the Melitz and Ottaviano (2008) model and examine the impact of this policy on firms' markup size and resource allocation between eligible and non-eligible firms for the rebates. We use customs transactions, tax administration, and firm-level data to measure the effect of variation in export tax ...
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 ...