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Keywords:misallocation OR Misallocation 

Working Paper
Information Acquisition and the Finance-Uncertainty Trap

Using novel measures of information acquisition, we document causal evidence of a feedback loop between firms’ credit access and information acquisition. To examine the macroeconomic implications of this feedback loop, we develop a tractable general equilibrium framework with financial frictions and endogenous information acquisition. In line with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that a rise in information costs raises the level of uncertainty and reduces a firm’s equity value, hampering its credit access. On the other hand, tightened credit constraints restrain activity of ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2025-12

Working Paper
The Allocation of Immigrant Talent: Macroeconomic Implications for the U.S. and Across Countries

We quantify the labor market barriers that immigrants face, using an occupational choice model with native-born individuals and immigrants of multiple types subject to wedges that distort their allocations. We find sizable output gains from removing immigrant wedges in the U.S., representing 25% of immigrants' overall economic contribution, and that these wedges alter the impact of alternative immigration policies. We harmonize microdata across 19 economies and exploit cross-country variation in immigrant outcomes and estimated wedges to examine the drivers of differences in wedges and gains ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-004

Working Paper
Natural Resources and Global Misallocation

We explore the efficiency in the allocation of physical capital and human capital across countries. The observed marginal products can differ across countries because of differences in technology (i.e. production functions) and in distortions (i.e. differences in use of factors) across countries. To identify differences in technology, we use new data and propose a simple method to estimate output shares of natural resources, and thus adjust the estimated marginal products of physical and human capital. With a sample of 79 countries from 1970 to 2005, we find that the world has decidedly moved ...
Working Papers , Paper 2015-13

Working Paper
Evergreening

We develop a simple model of concentrated lending where lenders have incentives for evergreening loans by offering better terms to firms that are close to default. We detect such lending behavior using loan-level supervisory data for the United States. Banks that own a larger share of a firm’s debt provide distressed firms with relatively more credit at lower interest rates. Building on this empirical validation, we incorporate the theoretical mechanism into a dynamic heterogeneous-firm model to show that evergreening affects aggregate outcomes, resulting in lower interest rates, higher ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-012

Working Paper
Evergreening

We develop a simple model of relationship lending where lenders have incentives for evergreening loans by offering better terms to firms that are close to default. We detect such lending behavior using loan-level supervisory data for the United States. Banks that own a larger share of a firm's debt provide distressed firms with relatively more credit at lower interest rates. Building on this empirical validation, we incorporate the theoretical mechanism into a dynamic heterogeneous-firm model to show that evergreening affects aggregate outcomes, resulting in lower interest rates, higher ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-012

Working Paper
Tax Heterogeneity and Misallocation

Companies face different effective marginal tax rates on their income. This can be detrimental to allocative efficiency unless taxes offset other distortions in the economy. This paper estimates the effect of tax rate heterogeneity on aggregate productivity in distorted economies with multiple frictions. Using firm-level balance-sheet data and estimates of marginal tax rates, we find that tax heterogeneity reduces total factor productivity by about 3 percent. Our findings highlight the positive correlation between marginal tax rates and other distortions to capital and especially labor. This ...
Working Papers , Paper 23-33

Working Paper
Immigrant Misallocation

We quantify the barriers that impede the integration of immigrants into foreign labor markets and investigate their aggregate implications. We develop a model of occupational choice with natives and immigrants of multiple types whose decisions are subject to wedges which distort their allocation across occupations. We estimate the model to match salient features of U.S. and cross-country individual-level data. We find that there are sizable GDP gains from removing the wedges faced by immigrants in U.S. labor markets, accounting for approximately one-fifth of the overall economic contribution ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-004

Working Paper
The Economic Gains from Equity

How much is inequity costing us? Using a simple growth accounting framework we apply standard shift-share techniques to data from the Current Population Survey (1990-2019) to compute the aggregate economic costs of persistent educational and labor market disparities by gender and race. We find significant economic losses associated with these gaps. Building on this finding, we consider which disparities generate the largest costs, paying specific attention to differences in employment, hours worked, educational attainment, educational utilization, and occupational allocation. We also examine ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2021-11

Working Paper
Scalable vs. Productive Technologies

Do larger firms have more productive technologies or are their technologies more scalable, or both? We use administrative data on Canadian and US firms to estimate flexible nonparametric production functions. Our estimation results in a joint distribution of output elasticities of capital, labor, and intermediate inputs---therefore, returns to scale (RTS)---along with total factor productivity (TFP). We find significant heterogeneity in both RTS and TFP across firms. Larger firms operate technologies with higher RTS, both across and within industries. Higher RTS for large firms are entirely ...
Working Papers , Paper 2024-019

Working Paper
Evergreening

We develop a simple model of relationship lending where lenders have an incentive to evergreen loans by offering better terms to less productive and more indebted firms. We detect such lending distortions using loan-level supervisory data for the United States. Low-capitalized banks systematically distort their risk assessments of firms to window-dress their balance sheets and extend relatively more credit to underreported borrowers. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, these effects are driven by larger outstanding loans and low-productivity firms. We incorporate the theoretical ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-012

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Faria-e-Castro, Miguel 10 items

Sanchez, Juan M. 10 items

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misallocation 27 items

Misallocation 18 items

bank lending 7 items

evergreening 7 items

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