{"title":"Changing marital transitions and homeownership among young households","authors":"Minsu Chang","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.11.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2023.11.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper shows that the evolving likelihood of marriage and divorce is an important factor that helps account for the changes in homeownership rates among young single households and married couples from 1970 to the mid 1990s. To investigate potential mechanisms behind these observed changes, I develop and estimate a life-cycle model that incorporates housing decisions and age-dependent shocks associated with marriage and divorce. The findings indicate that the declined likelihood of marriage, along with increased returns on non-housing assets, helps generate the observed rise in homeownership among singles aged 25-44 years. Conversely, the increased likelihood of divorce, in addition to higher house prices<span> and labor market volatility, contributes to the decrease in homeownership among young couples.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"52 ","pages":"Pages 46-63"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138516127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blocking patents, rent protection and economic growth","authors":"Michael A. Klein , Yibai Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.11.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.11.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We develop a Schumpeterian growth model to analyze the interaction between patent policy and firms' internal strategies to capture value from innovations. We consider two dimensions of patent policy: backward protection against imitation and forward protection, also known as blocking patents, against subsequent innovation that builds on a patented technology. Incumbent patent holders endogenously invest resources to protect their monopoly rents by impeding market entry of innovative competitors. We show that patent policy impacts economic growth through its influence on both the ex ante R&D incentives of potential innovators and the post-innovation rent protection incentives of incumbent firms. Most importantly, our analysis formalizes a novel growth-promoting role of forward protection; by guaranteeing previous innovators a share of future innovators' profits, forward protection reduces the incentive to actively obstruct follow-on innovations. We identify conditions under which the selective use of forward protection can stimulate economic growth through this mechanism.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"52 ","pages":"Pages 1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138466485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimal taxation in the life cycle with human capital investment","authors":"Been-Lon Chen, Fei-Chi Liang","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.11.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.11.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>This paper studies optimal taxes in a lifecycle model with unverifiable </span>human capital investment inseparable from regular consumption. The planner faces asymmetric information regarding agents’ exogenous abilities and endogenous human capital. Agents deviate in two ways: misreporting ability and mis-investing in human capital. We characterize the distortions in a model with i.i.d. shocks and full human capital depreciation. Distortions are characterized by capital wedges that are positive over the life cycle, labor wedges that are negative early and positive later in the life cycle, and net human capital wedges that are positive in the life cycle. These wedges serve as mechanisms to eliminate the distortion to consumption due to inseparability from education expenditure. Calibrate to U.S. data, we show numerically that these results apply in a richer model with persistent shocks and non-full human capital depreciation. Simulation suggests that average capital wedges are positive in all working periods, with progressive capital wedges in contemporary skills, average labor wedges are negative in early and positive in later periods, with hump-shape in skills and nonzero at the top and the bottom of the skill distribution, and net human capital wedges are positive and regressive in skills, indicating that human capital subsidies are in favor of the high skilled.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"52 ","pages":"Pages 21-45"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138472534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taxes, regulations, and the value of U.S. corporations: A reassessment","authors":"Ellen R. McGrattan","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper reassesses the conclusions of <span>McGrattan and Prescott (2005)</span><span>, which derived the quantitative implications of growth theory for U.S. corporate valuations<span>. In addition to having two more decades of data, the analysis incorporates recent changes in policies that affect corporate investments, taxes, and legal-form choice. Secular trends identified in the earlier period remain, with little change in the tangible capital-output ratio or profit share of output. Corporate valuations remain high relative to the postwar average, in line with the theoretical prediction. Critical to this prediction are the decline in effective tax rate on distributions and the rise of foreign direct investment abroad. With the recent enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, corporate valuations are predicted to rise even further relative to GDP.</span></span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 131-145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, Loukas Karabarbounis, Lee Ohanian
{"title":"Introduction to the special issue in memory of Thomas F. Cooley","authors":"Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, Loukas Karabarbounis, Lee Ohanian","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CEO compensation: Facts","authors":"Gian Luca Clementi , Thomas Cooley","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper we highlight a few striking features of CEO compensation in the US from 1994 to 2020. For the purpose of measuring both the level and sensitivity of compensation, we define the latter as the year–on–year change in the portion of the executive's wealth tied to the firm. Compared to a narrower definition often adopted in the literature to measure levels, the cross-sectional distribution displays much higher skewness and variation. Each year, a sizable fraction of chief executives lose money. During the second decade of this century, the award of options kept declining, while stock grants became more plentiful. In net, the dollar value of CEOs' position in their respective company did not keep up with the growth in capitalization. This contributes to explaining why the semi-elasticity of compensation with respect shareholder wealth has declined.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 6-27"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information acquisition and rating agencies","authors":"Harold Cole , Thomas F. Cooley","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>For decades credit rating agencies were viewed as trusted arbiters of creditworthiness and their ratings as important tools for managing risk. The common narrative is that the value of ratings was compromised by the evolution of the industry to a form where issuers pay for ratings. In this paper we consider both an investor-pays and an issuer-pays set-ups and show that if the investor-pays version can overcome the free-rider problem it is efficient, and otherwise leads to under-provision of information; while if the issuer-pays can force disclosure, it is efficient, but otherwise it leads to less revealing information because of the systematic distortion in revealed information along with over-investment in information. We show that in both these arrangements credit ratings have value in equilibrium and how reputation insures that, in equilibrium, ratings will reflect sound assessments of credit worthiness. We argue that regulatory reliance on ratings and the increasing importance of risk-weighted capital in prudential regulation have more likely contributed to distorted ratings than the matter of who pays for them.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 28-42"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-phenomenon restrictions: Unemployment effects of layoff costs and quit turbulence","authors":"Isaac Baley , Lars Ljungqvist , Thomas J. Sargent","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Cross-phenomenon restrictions associated with returns to labor mobility can inform calibrations of productivity processes in macro-labor models. We exploit how returns to labor mobility influence effects on equilibrium unemployment of changes in (a) layoff costs, and (b) distributions of skill losses coincident with quits (“quit turbulence”). Returns to labor mobility intermediate both effects. Ample labor reallocations observed across market economies that have different layoff costs imply that a turbulence explanation of trans-Atlantic unemployment experiences is robust to adding plausible quit turbulence.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 43-60"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Salome Baslandze , Jeremy Greenwood , Ricardo Marto , Sara Moreira
{"title":"The expansion of varieties in the new age of advertising","authors":"Salome Baslandze , Jeremy Greenwood , Ricardo Marto , Sara Moreira","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The last decades have seen large improvements in digital advertising technology that allowed firms to target better specific consumer tastes. This research studies the relationship between digital advertising, the rise of varieties, and economic welfare<span>. A model of advertising and varieties is developed, where firms choose the intensity of digital ads directed at specific consumers as well as traditional ads that are undirected. The calibrated model shows that improvements in digital advertising have driven the rise in varieties over time. Empirical evidence is presented using detailed micro data on firms' products and advertising choices since 1995. Causal analysis using exogenous variation in consumers' differential access to the internet supports the suggested mechanism.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 171-210"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accounting for the duality of the Italian economy","authors":"Jesús Fernández-Villaverde , Dario Laudati , Lee Ohanian , Vincenzo Quadrini","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2023.07.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.07.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>After 162 years of political unification, Italy still displays large regional economic differences. In 2019, the per capita GDP of Lombardia was 39,700 euros, but Calabria's per capita GDP was only 17,300 euros. We build a two-region, two-sector model of the Italian economy to measure the wedges that could account for the differences in aggregate variables between the North and the South. We find that the largest driver of the regional disparity in per capita output is the difference in total factor productivity, followed by fiscal redistribution. These two factors, together, account for more than 70 percent of the output disparity between the North and the South.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"50 ","pages":"Pages 267-290"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49698560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}