Beyond Competitive Devaluations: The Monetary Dimensions of Comparative Advantage

By Paul R. Bergin and Giancarlo Corsetti

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

Motivated by the long-standing debate on competitive devaluation, we propose a new perspective on how monetary and exchange rate policies can contribute to a country's international competitiveness. We refocus the analysis on the implications of monetary ...

Bubbly Recessions

By Siddhartha Biswas, Andrew Hanson, and Toan Phan

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

We develop a tractable bubbles model with financial friction and downward wage rigidity. Competitive speculation in risky bubbles can result in excessive investment booms that precede inefficient busts, where post- bubble aggregate economic activities col...

The Migration Accelerator: Labor Mobility, Housing, and Demand

By Greg Howard

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

What is the role of migration in regional evolutions? I document that within-US migration causes a reduction in the unemployment rate of the receiving city over several years. To establish this causal effect, I construct an instrument using out-migration ...

Quantitative Easing, Collateral Constraints, and Financial Spillovers

By John Geanakoplos and Haobin Wang

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

The steady application of quantitative easing (QE) has been followed by big and nonmonotonic effects on international asset prices and capital flows. We rationalize these observations in a model in which a central bank buys domestic assets that serve as t...

Shining a Light on Purchasing Power Parities

By Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

We use satellite-recorded nighttime lights as an independent benchmark of economic activity in order to generate three findings in the study of PPP-adjusted estimates of GDP. First, PPP-adjusted estimates better describe poor economies than do market exch...

Taxing hidden wealth

[Research Highlight]

September 29, 2020

Professor Daniel Reck discusses how the US found offshore tax havens and what more it can do.

Taxing Hidden Wealth: The Consequences of US Enforcement Initiatives on Evasive Foreign Accounts

By Niels Johannesen, Patrick Langetieg, Daniel Reck, Max Risch, and Joel Slemrod

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2020

In 2008, the IRS initiated efforts to curb the use of offshore accounts to evade taxes. This paper uses administrative microdata to examine the impact of enforcement efforts on taxpayers' reporting of offshore accounts and income. We find that enforcement...

SVAR (Mis)identification and the Real Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks

By Christian K. Wolf

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

I argue that the seemingly disparate findings of the recent empirical literature on monetary policy transmission are all consistent with the same standard macro models. Weak sign restrictions, which suggest that contractionary monetary policy, if anything...

Fighting Crises with Secrecy

By Gary Gorton and Guillermo Ordoñez

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2020

How does central bank lending during a crisis restore confidence? Emergency lending facilities that are opaque (in that names of borrowers are kept secret) raise the perceived average quality of bank assets in the economy, creating an information external...

Quietly preventing a bank run

[Research Highlight]

September 23, 2020

Should policymakers maintain anonymity for financial institutions who need a bailout during a crisis?

International exposure

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Revaluations of foreign currency debt can be especially severe for individual borrowers.

Bureaucratic water fights

[Research Highlight]

October 07, 2020

Resolving tension between state and local authorities in Brazil boosted needed investments in water and sanitation services.

The Buck Stops Where? Federalism, Uncertainty, and Investment in the Brazilian Water and Sanitation Sector

By Evan Plous Kresch

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2020

This paper documents how regulatory uncertainty may undermine public service when different levels of government share a mandate on public service provision. I examine the Brazilian water and sanitation sector, which presents a natural experiment of share...

Gender roles and misperceptions

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Men in Saudi Arabia underestimate how many of their peers think women should be able to work outside the home.

Russell Sage Foundation Programs and Initiatives Currently Accepting Letters of Inquiry

[News]

October 13, 2020

The deadline is November 11, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grants Competition

[News]

October 13, 2020

The deadline is November 2, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Populism's rise

[Research Highlight]

October 05, 2020

Political scientist Yotam Margalit discusses why economic anxiety alone doesn’t explain the appeal of populist politicians.

CSWEP Panel: Jobs Outside of Academia for Economists

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