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Working Paper
Climate Defaults and Financial Adaptation
We analyze the relationship between climate-related disasters and sovereign debt crises using a model with capital accumulation, sovereign default, and disaster risk. We find that disaster risk and default risk together lead to slow post-disaster recovery and heightened borrowing costs. Calibrating the model to Mexico, we find that the increase in cyclone risk due to climate change leads to a welfare loss equivalent to a permanent 1% consumption drop. However, financial adaptation via catastrophe bonds and disaster insurance can reduce these losses by about 25%. Our study highlights the ...
Working Paper
Barriers to Creative Destruction: Large Firms and Nonproductive Strategies
This working paper reviews recent empirical evidence on large firms and nonproductivestrategies that hinder creative destruction and reallocation. The focus is on three types ofnonproductive strategies: political connections, nonproductive patenting, and anticompetitiveacquisitions. Across different contexts using granular micro data sets, we overwhelmingly see that asfirms gain market share, they increasingly rely on nonproductive strategies but reduce theirproductive, innovation-based strategies. I also discuss theoretical channels, aggregate implications,and potentials for some policies.
Journal Article
Population, Migration, and Generations in Urban Neighborhoods
The number of people living in urban neighborhoods has been rising in recent decades. This Commentary investigates changes in the number, ages, and financial status of those who have been moving into and out of urban neighborhoods, using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel. I find that since 2000, the increase in urban populations is the result of young adults migrating into urban neighborhoods and senior citizens aging in place. Urban populations have also become more educated and well to do. While declining urban neighborhoods may still outnumber ...
Working Paper
Understanding Climate Damages: Consumption versus Investment
Existing climate-economy models use aggregate damage functions to model the effects of climate change. This approach assumes climate change has equal impacts on the productivity of firms that produce consumption and investment goods or services. We show the split between damage to consumption and investment productivity matters for the dynamic consequences of climate change. Drawing on the structural transformation literature, we develop a framework that incorporates heterogeneous climate damages. When investment is more vulnerable to climate, we find short-run consumption losses will be ...
Working Paper
Neoclassical Inequality
In a model with a worker-capitalist dichotomy, we show that the relationship between inequality (measured as a ratio of incomes for the two types) and growth is complicated; zero growth generally lowers inequality, except under extreme parameterizations. In particular, the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in production needs to be considerably greater than 1 in order for income inequality be higher with zero growth. If this condition is not met, factor prices adjust strongly causing the fall in the return to capital (the rise in wages) to reduce income inequality. Our ...
Working Paper
From Population Growth to TFP Growth
Using a firm-dynamics model that has been extended to include endogenous growth, we examine how population growth influences total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The most important theoretical result is that the growth rate of surviving old businesses is a "sufficient statistic" to determine the direction and the magnitude of the impact of population growth on TFP growth. Following that, the model is calibrated for Japan and the United States. The main finding of examining balanced growth paths (BGPs) with various rates of population growth is that the effect on TFP growth is sizable. ...
Speech
From Gaps to Growth: Equity as a Path to Prosperity
Presentation to UCLA Anderson Forecast Webinar, by Mary C. Daly, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, September 29, 2021
Working Paper
The Returns to Government R&D: Evidence from U.S. Appropriations Shocks
We estimate the causal impact of government-funded R&D on business-sector productivity growth. Identification is based on a novel narrative classification of all significant postwar changes in appropriations for R&D funded by five major federal agencies. Using long-horizon local projections and the narrative measures, we find that an increase in appropriations for nondefense R&D leads to increases in various measures of innovative activity, and higher productivity in the long run. We structurally estimate the production function elasticity of nondefense government R&D capital using the SP-IV ...
Journal Article
Southeast New Mexico shines as state economy slowly mends
Journal Article
Strength of economy, limited benefit eligibility in Texas curb long-term unemployment rate
An unemployment rate with a persistent long-term component can be more detrimental to the economy than the same jobless rate with a smaller share of long-term unemployed.