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Working Paper
3-D Gains from Trade
Static trade models imply modest gains from trade. I quantify the gains from trade in a multi-country dynamic stochastic environment, taking into account the contributions to welfare of trade across states of the world, and over time, as well as trade within dates and states (3-D gains). For developing countries, which have volatile productivity, standard risk aversion implies that 3-D gains from trade are at least twice as big as static gains, even under financial autarky. Because productivity is less volatile for developed countries, their 3-D gains from trade are only modestly bigger than ...
Working Paper
Sharing Asymmetric Tail Risk: Smoothing, Asset Prices and Terms of Trade
Crises and tail events have asymmetric effects across borders, raising the value of arrangements improving insurance of macroeconomic risk. Using a two-country DSGE model, we provide an analytical and quantitative analysis of the channels through which countries gain from sharing (tail) risk. Riskier countries gain in smoother consumption but lose in relative wealth and average consumption. Safer countries benefit from higher wealth and better average terms of trade. Calibrated using the empirical distribution of moments of GDP-growth across countries, the model suggests non-negligible ...
Working Paper
Taxes and International Risk Sharing
We examine the extent to which differences in international tax rates may account for the small correlations of per capita consumption fluctuations across countries. Theory implies a close relationship between relative consumption growth, and consumption and capital income tax rate differentials. We find strong empirical evidence for this relationship. Idiosyncratic output fluctuations account for the majority of cross country consumption growth variability, but trends in tax differentials are informative about the dynamic evolution of international risk sharing. In particular, adjusting for ...
Report
On the Desirability of Capital Controls
In a standard two-country international macro model, we ask whether imposing restrictions on international non contingent borrowing and lending is ever desirable. The answer is yes. If one country imposes capital controls unilaterally, it can generate favorable changes in the dynamics of equilibrium interest rates and the terms of trade, and thereby benefit at the expense of its trading partner. If both countries simultaneously impose capital controls, the welfare effects are ambiguous. We identify calibrations in which symmetric capital controls improve terms of trade insurance against ...
Working Paper
Why Are Exchange Rates So Smooth? A Household Finance Explanation
Empirical moments of asset prices and exchange rates imply that pricing kernels are almost perfectly correlated across countries. Otherwise, observed real exchange rates would be too smooth for high Sharpe ratios. However, the cross country correlation among macro fundamentals is weak. We reconcile these facts in a two-country stochastic growth model with heterogeneous households and a home bias in consumption. In our model, only a small fraction of households trade domestic and foreign equities. We show that this mechanism can quantitatively account for the smoothness of exchange rates in ...