Brendan Epstein, Ryan Nunn, Musa Orak, Elena S. Patel
{"title":"Taxation, Social Welfare, and Labor Market Frictions","authors":"Brendan Epstein, Ryan Nunn, Musa Orak, Elena S. Patel","doi":"10.17016/ifdp.2020.1284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/ifdp.2020.1284","url":null,"abstract":"Taking inefficiencies from taxation as given, a well-known public finance literature shows that the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is a sufficient statistic for assessing the deadweight loss (DWL) from taxing labor income in a static neoclassical framework. Using a theoretical approach, we revisit this result from the vantage point of a general equilibrium macroeconomic model with labor search frictions. We show that, in this context, and against the backdrop of inefficient taxation, DWL can be up to 38 percent higher than the ETI under a range of reasonable parametric assumptions. Externalities arising from market participants not taking into account the impact of changes in their search- and vacancy-posting activities on other market participants can amplify this divergence substantially. However, with theoretical precision, we show how the wedge between the ETI and DWL can be controlled for, using readily observable variables.","PeriodicalId":433202,"journal":{"name":"International Finance Discussion Paper","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122462230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Dominant Currency Financing Channel of External Adjustment","authors":"C. Casas, S. Meleshchuk, Yannick Timmer","doi":"10.32468/be.1111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32468/be.1111","url":null,"abstract":"We provide evidence of a new channel of how exchange rates affect trade. Using a novel identification strategy that exploits firms' foreign currency debt maturity structure in Colombia around a large depreciation, we show that firms experiencing a stronger debt revaluation of dominant currency debt due to a home currency depreciation compress imports relatively more while exports are unaffected. Dominant currency financing does not lead to an import compression for firms that export, hold foreign currency assets, or are active in the foreign exchange derivatives markets, as they are all hedged against a revaluation of their debt. These findings can be rationalized through the prism of a model with costly state verification and foreign currency borrowing. Dominant currency pricing mutes the effects of dominant currency financing on imports relative to producer currency pricing.","PeriodicalId":433202,"journal":{"name":"International Finance Discussion Paper","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126618977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
João Ayres, Gaston Navarro, J. Nicolini, Pedro Teles
{"title":"Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises with Long Stagnations","authors":"João Ayres, Gaston Navarro, J. Nicolini, Pedro Teles","doi":"10.21034/wp.757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21034/wp.757","url":null,"abstract":"We assess the quantitative relevance of expectations-driven sovereign debt crises, focusing on the Southern European crisis of the early 2010’s and the Argentine default of 2001. The source of multiplicity is the one in Calvo (1988). Key for multiplicity is an output process featuring long periods of either high growth or stagnation that we estimate using data for those countries. We find that expectations-driven debt crises are quantitatively relevant but state dependent, as they only occur during stagnations. Expectations are a major driver explaining default rates and credit spread differences between Spain and Argentina.","PeriodicalId":433202,"journal":{"name":"International Finance Discussion Paper","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131479226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Ammer, Stijn Claessens, A. Tabova, Caleb Wroblewski
{"title":"Home Country Interest Rates and International Investment in U.S. Bonds","authors":"J. Ammer, Stijn Claessens, A. Tabova, Caleb Wroblewski","doi":"10.17016/IFDP.2018.1231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/IFDP.2018.1231","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We analyze how interest rates affect cross-border portfolio investments. Data on U.S. bond holdings by foreign investors from 31 countries for the period 2003–2016 and a large variety in movements in interest rates in these countries provide for a unique way to analyze shifts in investment behavior in response to interest rates. We find that low(er) interest rates, now prevailing in many advanced countries, lead to greater investment in general into the United States, with the effects generally driven by investment in (higher yielding) corporate bonds, rather than in Treasury bonds. In addition to affecting overall investments, lower interest rates at home are associated with a greater weight on corporate bonds, consistent with search-for-yield. The results are economically important and robust to controlling for a number of country-specific macroeconomic and financial conditions as well as to sample restrictions and choices of interest rate. Our findings have important policy implications in that they suggest that low interest rates can lead to shifts in the volume and composition of overseas investments.","PeriodicalId":433202,"journal":{"name":"International Finance Discussion Paper","volume":"163 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125926374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Macroeconomic and Financial Risks: A Tale of Mean and Volatility","authors":"Dario Caldara, Chiara Scotti, M. Zhong","doi":"10.17016/ifdp.2021.1326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/ifdp.2021.1326","url":null,"abstract":"We study the joint conditional distribution of GDP growth and corporate credit spreads using a stochastic volatility VAR. Our estimates display significant cyclical co-movement in uncertainty (the volatility implied by the conditional distributions), and risk (the probability of tail events) between the two variables. We also find that the interaction between two shocks--a main business cycle shock as in Angeletos et al. (2020) and a main financial shock--is crucial to account for the variation in uncertainty and risk, especially around crises. Our results highlight the importance of using multivariate nonlinear models to understand the determinants of uncertainty and risk.","PeriodicalId":433202,"journal":{"name":"International Finance Discussion Paper","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114823540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}