How are the gains and losses from trade (disruptions) distributed across individuals within a country? First, we document that tradable goods constitute a larger fraction of expenditures for poor households. Second, we build a trade model with nonhomothetic preferences-to generate the documented relationship between tradable expenditure shares, income, and wealth-and uninsurable earnings risk-to generate heterogeneity in income and wealth. Third, we use the calibrated model to quantify the differential welfare gains and losses from trade on households along the income and wealth distribution. In a numerical exercise, we increase trade costs by 20 percentage points and allow the economy to transition to a new steady state. We find that households in the lowest wealth decile experience welfare losses over the transition, measured by permanent consumption equivalents, that are 35 percent larger than those in the highest wealth decile. Finally, we find that the distributional impacts of trade significantly depend on how the tariff revenue is spent. In particular, using tariff revenue to reduce labor income taxes is close to welfare-neutral.
Using data from Chile and Korea, we find that a larger fraction of aggregate productivity growth is due to firm entry and exit during fast-growth episodes compared to slow-growth episodes. Studies of other countries confirm this empirical relationship. We develop a model of endogenous firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992). Firms enter with efficiencies drawn from a distribution whose mean grows over time. After entering, a firm's efficiency grows with age. In the calibrated model, reducing entry costs or barriers to technology adoption generates the pattern we document in the data. Firm turnover is crucial for rapid productivity growth.
Emerging economies, unlike advanced economies, have accumulated large foreign reserve holdings. We argue that this policy is an optimal response to an increase in foreign debt rollover risk. In our model, reserves play a key role in reducing debt rollover crises ("sudden stops"), akin to the role of bank reserves in preventing bank runs. We find that a small, unexpected, and permanent increase in rollover risk accounts for the outburst of sudden stops in the late 1990s, the subsequent increase in foreign reserves holdings, and the salient resilience of emerging economies to sudden stops ever since. Finally, we show that a policy of pooling reserves can substantially reduce the reserves needed by emerging economies.
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