Search Results
Showing results 1 to 5 of approximately 5.
(refine search)
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 ...
Report
Buy Big or Buy Small? Procurement Policies, Firms' Financing, and the Macroeconomy
This paper provides a framework to study how different allocation systems of public procurement contracts affect firm dynamics and long-run macroeconomic outcomes. We build a novel panel data set for Spain that merges public procurement data, credit register loan data, and quasi-census firm-level data. We provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that procurement contracts act as collateral for firms and help them grow out of their financial constraints. We then build a model of firm dynamics with asset and earnings-based borrowing constraints and a government that buys goods and ...
Journal Article
TFP, Capital Deepening, and Gains from Trade
Using a dynamic, multicountry model with capital accumulation, we compute the exact transition paths for 93 countries following a permanent, uniform, unanticipated trade liberalization and calculate the resulting welfare gains from trade. We find that while the dynamic gains are different across countries, consumption transition paths look similar except for scale. In addition, dynamic gains accrue gradually and are about 60 percent of steady-state gains for everycountry. Finally, the contribution of capital accumulation to dynamic gains is four times that of total factor productivity.
Working Paper
Capital Accumulation and Dynamic Gains from Trade
We compute welfare gains from trade in a dynamic, multi-country Ricardian model where international trade affects capital accumulation. We calibrate the model for 93 countries and examine transition paths between steady-states after a permanent, uniform trade liberalization across countries. Our model allows for both the relative price of investment and the investment rate to depend on the world distribution of trade barriers. Accounting for transitional dynamics, welfare gains are about 60 percent of those measured by comparing only the steady-states, and three times larger than those with ...
Working Paper
Trade and Inequality in an Overlapping Generations Model with Capital Accumulation
We study the lifecycle aspect of within-country inequality that stems from capital and labor services supplied by individuals. Our environment is a combination of a multicountry trade model and an overlapping generations model with production and capital accumulation. Trade liberalization increases the measured total factor productivity in each country, which increases the marginal product of capital and incentivizes capital accumulation. Higher capital stock and higher measured productivity raise the marginal product of labor and, hence, wages. Inequality, measured by the ratio of old ...