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The Opportunity Costs of Entrepreneurs in International Trade
We show that a trade model with an exogenous set of heterogeneous firms with fixed operating costs has the same aggregate outcomes as a span-of-control model. Fixed costs in the heterogeneous-firm model are entrepreneurs' forgone wage in the span-of-control model.
Working Paper
Exporters of Services: A Look at U.S. Exporters Outside of the Manufacturing Sector
Using transaction data for the U.S., this paper presents a series of stylized facts on exporters in services industries. We find that most of the basic facts on manufacturing exporters extend to the services sectors with three important differences. First, the participation rate of services firms in foreign markets is much lower than that of manufacturing firms. Second, the size premia at services exporters are significantly higher than those among manufacturers. Third, the survival rates of services exporters tend to be lower than that of manufacturing exporters. All three facts are ...
Working Paper
Corporate income tax, legal form of organization, and employment
We adopt a dynamic stochastic occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents and evaluate the impact of a potential reduction in the corporate income tax on employment. We show that a reduction in corporate income tax leads to moderate job creation. In the extreme case, the elimination of the corporate income tax would reduce the non-employed population by 5.4 percent. In the model, a reduction in the corporate income tax creates jobs through two channels, one from new entry firms and one from existing firms changing their form of legal organization. In particular, the latter accounts ...
Working Paper
Wage Inequality and Job Stability
How much wage inequality in Brazil is caused by firing costs? To answer this question, I develop and estimate a general equilibrium search and matching model with heterogeneous layoff rates among firms. Using matched employer-employee data from Brazil, I estimate the model, and I find that it replicates the observed residual wage inequality in the data. I simulate a counterfactual removal of existing firing costs, and I find that residual wage inequality drops by 26% as measured by wage variance and by 4.4% as measured by the p95-p5 ratio among 25- to 55-year-old males working in the private ...
Report
Appendix for Financial Frictions and Fluctuations in Volatility
This appendix contains five sections. Section 1 provides details for the comparative statics exercise performed in the simple example. Section 2 discusses extending the model to allow firms to default on the wages for managers. Section 3 describes the firm-level and aggregate data. Section 4 contains the details of the computational algorithm. Finally, Section 5 reports the results for our model with a lower labor elasticity.
Report
Sovereign risk and firm heterogeneity
This paper studies the recessionary effects of sovereign default risk using firm-level data and a model of sovereign debt with firm heterogeneity. Our environment features a two-way feedback loop. Low output decreases the tax revenues of the government and raises the risk that it will default on its debt. The associated increase in sovereign interest rate spreads, in turn, raises the interest rates paid by firms, which further depresses their production. Importantly, these effects are not homogeneous across firms, as interest rate hikes have more severe consequences for firms that are in need ...