Search Results
Journal Article
Idiosyncratic Sectoral Growth, Balanced Growth, and Sectoral Linkages
We study the growth properties of an economy where different sectors are linked by way of intermediates and potentially grow at different rates. We characterize the economy's equilibrium balanced growth path, and derive an analytical expression that summarizes how TFP growth in a given sector affects value added growth in every other sector and, therefore, aggregate GDP growth. We show in a special case that a version of Hulten's (1978) theorem, whereby the effects of changes in sector-specific productivity on GDP are entirely captured by that sector's share in GDP, also holds in growth rates ...
Working Paper
Identifying Structural VARs with a Proxy Variable and a Test for a Weak Proxy
This paper develops a simple estimator to identify structural shocks in vector autoregressions (VARs) by using a proxy variable that is correlated with the structural shock of interest but uncorrelated with other structural shocks. When the proxy variable is weak, modeled as local to zero, the estimator is inconsistent and converges to a distribution. This limiting distribution is characterized, and the estimator is shown to be asymptotically biased when the proxy variable is weak. The F statistic from the projection of the proxy variable onto the VAR errors can be used to test for a weak ...
Working Paper
A Model of Slow Recoveries from Financial Crises
This paper documents highly persistent effects of financial crises on output, labor productivity and employment in a sample of emerging economies. To address these facts, it introduces a quantitative macroeconomic model that includes endogenous TFP growth through firm creation. Firm creators obtain funding from a financial intermediation sector which is subject to frictions. These frictions become especially severe in a financial crisis, increasing the cost of credit for firm creators and thereby lowering the growth rate of aggregate TFP. As a consequence, the model produces medium-run ...
Working Paper
Firm-Embedded Productivity and Cross-Country Income Differences
We measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity we refer to the components of productivity that differ across firms and that can be transferred internationally, such as blueprints, management practices, and intangible capital. Our approach relies on microlevel data on the cross-border operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We compare the market shares of the exact same MNE in different countries and document that they are about four times larger in developing than in high-income countries. This finding ...
Report
Intangible Capital and Measured Productivity
Because ?rms invest heavily in R&D, software, brands, and other intangible assets?at a rate close to that of tangible assets?changes in measured GDP, which does not include all intangible investments, understate the actual changes in total output. If changes in the labor input are more precisely measured, then it is possible to observe little change in measured total factor productivity (TFP) coincidentally with large changes in hours and investment. This mismeasurement leaves business cycle modelers with large and unexplained labor wedges accounting for most of the ?uctuations in aggregate ...
Working Paper
Term Premium Variability and Monetary Policy
Two traditional explanations for the mean and variability of the term premium are: (i) time-varying risk premia on long bonds, and (ii) segmented markets between long- and short-term bonds. This paper integrates these two approaches into a medium-scale DSGE model. We consider two sources of business cycle variability: shocks to total factor productivity (TFP), and shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment (MEI). The ability of the risk approach to match the first moment of the term premium depends upon the relative importance of these two shocks. If MEI shocks are an important driver of ...
Working Paper
Finance and Productivity Growth: Firm-level Evidence
Using data on a broad set of European firms, we find a strong positive relationship between the use of external financing and future productivity (TFP) growth within firms. This relationship is robust to various measures of financing and productivity, and strengthens as financing costs increase. We provide evidence against a reverse-causality explanation by showing that this relationship arises from the component of TFP that is outside the information set of the firm. These findings indicate that financial development supports productivity growth within firms, and helps explain why economic ...
Speech
When the Facts Change…: remarks at the 9th High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System, Zürich, Switzerland
Remarks at the 9th High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System, Zrich, Switzerland.
Working Paper
TFP, Capital Deepening, and Gains from trade
We study welfare gains from trade in a dynamic, multicountry model with capital accumulation. We compute the exact transition paths for 93 countries following a permanent, uniform, unanticipated trade liberalization. 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 every country. Finally, the contribution of capital accumulation to dynamic gains is four times that of TFP.
Working Paper
Capital goods trade and economic development
We argue that international trade in capital goods has quantitatively important effects on economic development through two channels: (i) capital formation and (ii) aggregate TFP. We embed a multi country, multi sector Ricardian model of trade into a neoclassical growth model. Barriers to trade result in a misallocation of factors both within and across countries. Our model matches several trade and development facts within a unified framework. It is consistent with the world distribution of capital goods production, cross-country differences in investment rate and price of final goods, and ...