Search Results
Working Paper
The Trade-Comovement Puzzle
Standard international transmission mechanism of productivity shocks predicts a weak endogenous linkage between trade and business cycle synchronization: a problem known as the trade-comovement puzzle. We provide the foundational analysis of the puzzle, pointing to three natural candidate resolutions: i) financial market frictions; ii) Greenwood–Hercowitz–Huffman preferences; and iii) dynamic trade elasticity that is low in the short run but high in the long run. We show the effects of each of these candidate resolutions analytically and evaluate them quantitatively. We find that, while ...
Working Paper
International Trade and Intertemporal Substitution
This paper quantitatively investigates the extent to which variation in the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution can help account for puzzling features of cyclical fluctuations of international trade volumes. Our insight is that, because international trade is time-intensive, variation in the rate at which agents are willing to substitute across time affects how trade volumes respond to changes in output and prices. We use a standard small open economy model with time-intensive international trade, calibrated to match key features of U.S. data and disciplining the variation in the ...