Jianwei Xing, Eric Yongchen Zou, Zhentao Yin, Yong Wang, Zhenhua Li
We study a new consumption stimulus program implemented by a large Chinese city that leverages mobile payment platforms to dispense massive amounts of small-value digital coupons. Exploiting a “rush” design of the dispensing process in which over 1 million program participants compete for coupons on a first-come, first-served basis through a digital portal, we estimate that winning coupons increases weekly out-of-pocket spending by US$3 for every US$1 in government subsidy. Coupon-winning consumers practice inter-temporal substitution by moving up purchases that would have been made four months in the future. Customer flow analysis suggests that coupons distort consumption toward pricier options. (JEL D15, E21, E42, H71, O18, P25, P36)
{"title":"“Quick Response” Economic Stimulus: The Effect of Small-Value Digital Coupons on Spending","authors":"Jianwei Xing, Eric Yongchen Zou, Zhentao Yin, Yong Wang, Zhenhua Li","doi":"10.1257/mac.20210148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20210148","url":null,"abstract":"We study a new consumption stimulus program implemented by a large Chinese city that leverages mobile payment platforms to dispense massive amounts of small-value digital coupons. Exploiting a “rush” design of the dispensing process in which over 1 million program participants compete for coupons on a first-come, first-served basis through a digital portal, we estimate that winning coupons increases weekly out-of-pocket spending by US$3 for every US$1 in government subsidy. Coupon-winning consumers practice inter-temporal substitution by moving up purchases that would have been made four months in the future. Customer flow analysis suggests that coupons distort consumption toward pricier options. (JEL D15, E21, E42, H71, O18, P25, P36)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135369079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper proposes a parsimonious theory explaining the cyclicality of monetary policy in emerging countries in a model where access to foreign financing depends on the real exchange rate and the government lacks commitment. The discretionary monetary policy is procyclical to mitigate balance sheet effects originating from exchange rate depreciations during sudden stops. Committing to an inflation targeting regime is found to increase social welfare and reduce the frequency of financial crises despite increasing their severity. Finally, the ability to use capital controls induces a less procyclical discretionary monetary policy and delivers higher welfare gains than an inflation targeting regime. (JEL E31, E32, E44, E52, F31, F33, F38)
{"title":"Monetary Policy in Sudden Stop-Prone Economies","authors":"Louphou Coulibaly","doi":"10.1257/mac.20200201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20200201","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a parsimonious theory explaining the cyclicality of monetary policy in emerging countries in a model where access to foreign financing depends on the real exchange rate and the government lacks commitment. The discretionary monetary policy is procyclical to mitigate balance sheet effects originating from exchange rate depreciations during sudden stops. Committing to an inflation targeting regime is found to increase social welfare and reduce the frequency of financial crises despite increasing their severity. Finally, the ability to use capital controls induces a less procyclical discretionary monetary policy and delivers higher welfare gains than an inflation targeting regime. (JEL E31, E32, E44, E52, F31, F33, F38)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136119728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Demography and structural transformation are interrelated, and depend critically on education. At the turn of the twentieth century, US parents began having fewer children while increasing educational investment per child. This quantity-quality tradeoff facilitated job reallocation from the low-skilled agricultural sector to the high-skilled nonagricultural sector. This transformation is examined in a heterogeneous agent model with a nondegenerate human capital distribution, focusing on how fertility and education decisions affect structural transformation. The result shows that the quantity-quality decisions account for up to approximately one-third of the decline in the agricultural employment share. (JEL E24, I21, I26, J11, J13, J24, N31)
{"title":"Schooling, Skill Demand, and Differential Fertility in the Process of Structural Transformation","authors":"T. Terry Cheung","doi":"10.1257/mac.20180348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20180348","url":null,"abstract":"Demography and structural transformation are interrelated, and depend critically on education. At the turn of the twentieth century, US parents began having fewer children while increasing educational investment per child. This quantity-quality tradeoff facilitated job reallocation from the low-skilled agricultural sector to the high-skilled nonagricultural sector. This transformation is examined in a heterogeneous agent model with a nondegenerate human capital distribution, focusing on how fertility and education decisions affect structural transformation. The result shows that the quantity-quality decisions account for up to approximately one-third of the decline in the agricultural employment share. (JEL E24, I21, I26, J11, J13, J24, N31)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"247 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135368142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alberto Cavallo, Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar
We use the structure of the Melitz (2003) model to compute the cost of living and welfare across 47 countries, and compare these to conventional measures of prices and real consumption from the International Comparisons Project (ICP). The cost of living is inferred without directly using ICP prices of traded goods and instead relying on output prices, openness, domestic trade costs, and product variety measured by the counts of barcodes or firms. We find that welfare relative to the United States is lower than indicated by real consumption for most countries, but similar in China and Japan and similar or higher in some European countries. (JEL E21, E23, E31, O11)
{"title":"Product Variety, the Cost of Living, and Welfare across Countries","authors":"Alberto Cavallo, Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar","doi":"10.1257/mac.20210137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20210137","url":null,"abstract":"We use the structure of the Melitz (2003) model to compute the cost of living and welfare across 47 countries, and compare these to conventional measures of prices and real consumption from the International Comparisons Project (ICP). The cost of living is inferred without directly using ICP prices of traded goods and instead relying on output prices, openness, domestic trade costs, and product variety measured by the counts of barcodes or firms. We find that welfare relative to the United States is lower than indicated by real consumption for most countries, but similar in China and Japan and similar or higher in some European countries. (JEL E21, E23, E31, O11)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136079726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many policymakers view power outages as a major constraint on firm productivity in developing countries. Yet empirical studies find modest short-run effects of outages on firm performance. This paper builds a dynamic macroeconomic model to study the long-run general-equilibrium effects of power outages on productivity. Outages lower productivity in the model by creating idle resources, depressing the scale of incumbent firms and reducing entry of new firms. Consistent with the empirical literature, the model predicts small short-run effects of eliminating outages. However, the long-run general-equilibrium effects are much larger, supporting the view that eliminating outages is an important development objective. (JEL D22, D24, G32, L94, O13, O14)
{"title":"Electricity and Firm Productivity: A General-Equilibrium Approach","authors":"Stephie Fried, David Lagakos","doi":"10.1257/mac.20210248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20210248","url":null,"abstract":"Many policymakers view power outages as a major constraint on firm productivity in developing countries. Yet empirical studies find modest short-run effects of outages on firm performance. This paper builds a dynamic macroeconomic model to study the long-run general-equilibrium effects of power outages on productivity. Outages lower productivity in the model by creating idle resources, depressing the scale of incumbent firms and reducing entry of new firms. Consistent with the empirical literature, the model predicts small short-run effects of eliminating outages. However, the long-run general-equilibrium effects are much larger, supporting the view that eliminating outages is an important development objective. (JEL D22, D24, G32, L94, O13, O14)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135369089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using microlevel data, we document systematic forecast errors in household income expectations that are related to the level of income. We show that these errors can be formalized by a modest deviation from rational expectations, where agents overestimate the persistence of their income process. We then investigate the implications of these distortions on consumption and savings behavior and find two effects. First, these distortions allow an otherwise fully optimization-based quantitative model to match the joint distribution of liquid assets and income. Second, the bias alters the distribution of marginal propensities to consume which makes government stimulus policies less effective. (JEL D84, E21, D91, E62, G51)
{"title":"Overpersistence Bias in Individual Income Expectations and Its Aggregate Implications","authors":"Filip Rozsypal, Kathrin Schlafmann","doi":"10.1257/mac.20190056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20190056","url":null,"abstract":"Using microlevel data, we document systematic forecast errors in household income expectations that are related to the level of income. We show that these errors can be formalized by a modest deviation from rational expectations, where agents overestimate the persistence of their income process. We then investigate the implications of these distortions on consumption and savings behavior and find two effects. First, these distortions allow an otherwise fully optimization-based quantitative model to match the joint distribution of liquid assets and income. Second, the bias alters the distribution of marginal propensities to consume which makes government stimulus policies less effective. (JEL D84, E21, D91, E62, G51)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135948784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gianluca Benigno, Huigang Chen, Christopher Otrok, Alessandro Rebucci, Eric R. Young
There is a new and now large literature analyzing government policies for financial stability based on models with endogenous borrowing constraints. These normative analyses build upon the concept of constrained efficient allocation where the social planner is constrained by the same borrowing limit that agents face. In this paper, we show that there exists at least one set of tools implementing the constrained efficient allocation that can also be used by a Ramsey planner to replicate an unconstrained allocation, achieving higher welfare. Constrained efficiency may lead to inaccurate characterizations of welfare maximizing policies relative to Ramsey optimal policy. (JEL E32, E44, E61, G01, H21)
{"title":"Optimal Policy for Macrofinancial Stability","authors":"Gianluca Benigno, Huigang Chen, Christopher Otrok, Alessandro Rebucci, Eric R. Young","doi":"10.1257/mac.20200046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20200046","url":null,"abstract":"There is a new and now large literature analyzing government policies for financial stability based on models with endogenous borrowing constraints. These normative analyses build upon the concept of constrained efficient allocation where the social planner is constrained by the same borrowing limit that agents face. In this paper, we show that there exists at least one set of tools implementing the constrained efficient allocation that can also be used by a Ramsey planner to replicate an unconstrained allocation, achieving higher welfare. Constrained efficiency may lead to inaccurate characterizations of welfare maximizing policies relative to Ramsey optimal policy. (JEL E32, E44, E61, G01, H21)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"148 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135368139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We study the dynamic interaction between COVID-19, economic mobility, and containment policy. We use Bayesian panel structural vector autoregressions with daily data for 44 countries, identified through traditional and narrative sign restrictions. We find that incidence shocks and containment shocks have large and persistent effects on mobility, morbidity, and mortality that last for one to two months. These shocks are the main drivers of the pandemic, explaining between 20 and 60 percent of the average and historical variability in mobility, cases, and deaths worldwide. The policy trade-off associated to nonpharmaceutical interventions is 1 pp less economic mobility per day for 8 percent fewer deaths after 3 months. (JEL C43, H51, I12, I18, O15)
{"title":"Disentangling COVID-19, Economic Mobility, and Containment Policy Shocks","authors":"Annika Camehl, Malte Rieth","doi":"10.1257/mac.20210071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20210071","url":null,"abstract":"We study the dynamic interaction between COVID-19, economic mobility, and containment policy. We use Bayesian panel structural vector autoregressions with daily data for 44 countries, identified through traditional and narrative sign restrictions. We find that incidence shocks and containment shocks have large and persistent effects on mobility, morbidity, and mortality that last for one to two months. These shocks are the main drivers of the pandemic, explaining between 20 and 60 percent of the average and historical variability in mobility, cases, and deaths worldwide. The policy trade-off associated to nonpharmaceutical interventions is 1 pp less economic mobility per day for 8 percent fewer deaths after 3 months. (JEL C43, H51, I12, I18, O15)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"149 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135369074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher Erceg, Andrea Prestipino, Andrea Raffo
Fiscal devaluations—an increase in import tariffs and export subsidies (IX) or an increase in value-added taxes and payroll subsidies (VP)—have been shown to provide as much stimulus under fixed exchange rates as a currency devaluation. We find that if agents expect policies to be reversed and the tax pass-through is large, VP is contractionary and IX provides a modest boost. In our medium-scale DSGE model, both features are crucial in accounting for Germany’s underperformance in response to VP in 2007. These findings cast doubt on fiscal devaluations as a cyclical stabilization tool when monetary policy is constrained. (JEL E32, E52, E62, F13, F33, H20)
{"title":"Trade Policies and Fiscal Devaluations","authors":"Christopher Erceg, Andrea Prestipino, Andrea Raffo","doi":"10.1257/mac.20210163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20210163","url":null,"abstract":"Fiscal devaluations—an increase in import tariffs and export subsidies (IX) or an increase in value-added taxes and payroll subsidies (VP)—have been shown to provide as much stimulus under fixed exchange rates as a currency devaluation. We find that if agents expect policies to be reversed and the tax pass-through is large, VP is contractionary and IX provides a modest boost. In our medium-scale DSGE model, both features are crucial in accounting for Germany’s underperformance in response to VP in 2007. These findings cast doubt on fiscal devaluations as a cyclical stabilization tool when monetary policy is constrained. (JEL E32, E52, E62, F13, F33, H20)","PeriodicalId":47991,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Macroeconomics","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135369082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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