Mai Chi Dao , Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas , Daniel Leigh , Prachi Mishra
{"title":"Understanding the international rise and fall of inflation since 2020","authors":"Mai Chi Dao , Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas , Daniel Leigh , Prachi Mishra","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103658","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103658","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper analyzes inflation dynamics in 21 advanced and emerging market economies since 2020. We decompose inflation into core inflation as measured by the weighted median inflation rate, and headline shocks—deviations of headline inflation from core. Headline shocks occurred largely on account of energy price changes, although food price changes and indicators of supply chain problems also played a role. We explain the evolution of core inflation with two factors: the strength of macroeconomic conditions—measured by the unemployment gap, the output gap, and the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment—and the pass-through into core inflation from past headline shocks. We conclude that the international rise and fall of inflation since 2020 largely reflected the direct and pass-through effects of headline shocks. Macroeconomic conditions generally played a secondary role. In the United States, estimated price pressures from strong macroeconomic conditions had been greater than in other economies but have eased.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"148 ","pages":"Article 103658"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142177731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A theory of the dynamics of factor shares","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103610","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div><span>This paper proposes a theory of the dynamics of factor shares within the context of an equilibrium model of endogenous innovation, growth, and cycles. Our deterministic model rests on two assumptions: (i) production requires two complementary inputs, capital, and labor, and (ii) technical progress is labor-saving and embodied in capital goods. The model’s unique equilibrium path displays recurring growth cycles, each consisting of an adoption and innovation phase, along which factor shares fluctuate within bounds. The interaction between factor prices and opportunities for labor-saving innovations brings about both persistent growth and aggregate oscillations through which it takes place. We provide evidence that the model-implied correlations between factor shares and the other </span>labor market variables are consistent with the data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"148 ","pages":"Article 103610"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141135426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contagion in debt and collateral markets","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103600","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103600","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates contagion in financial networks through collateralized debt and its effects on social welfare. Our model incorporates contagion through both counterparty debt exposures and endogenous collateral asset pricing. We find that collateral mitigates counterparty exposures and reduces social inefficiency when faced with negative shocks, but not always. We also show the importance of the interaction between the level of collateral and network structure as contagion can change dramatically depending on that interaction. The model also provides policy-relevant collateral-to-debt ratios (haircuts) to attain robust and fully insulated macroprudential states for any network and also the optimal collateral ratio to attain full insulation for a specific network.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"148 ","pages":"Article 103600"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141152272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comments on “Income differences and health disparities: Roles of preventive vs. curative medicine” by Serdar Ozkan","authors":"Svetlana Pashchenko","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103697","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103697","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"150 ","pages":"Article 103697"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Income differences and health disparities: Roles of preventive vs. curative medicine","authors":"Serdar Ozkan","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103698","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103698","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I show that while the rich spend more on healthcare early in life, the poor outspend them by 25% from middle to old age in the US. Furthermore, the poor seek medical care less frequently but face higher risks of extreme expenses when they do. I develop a life-cycle model, incorporating physical and preventive health capital, along with features of the US healthcare system. Preventive health capital governs the distribution of health shocks, thereby controlling life expectancy. The model suggests that the rich spend more on preventive care due to lower marginal utility of consumption, resulting in milder health shocks and lower curative expenses in old age. Public insurance—covering large curative expenditures—inadvertently widens the life expectancy gap by hampering the poor’s incentives to invest in preventive health. Policy experiments suggest that expanding insurance coverage and subsidizing preventive care to encourage the poor to use healthcare early in life yield substantial welfare gains.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"150 ","pages":"Article 103698"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Joint search over the life cycle","authors":"Annika Bacher , Philipp Grübener , Lukas Nord","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103696","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103696","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper provides evidence that the added worker effect – labor force entry upon spousal job loss – is stronger for young than old households. Using a life cycle model of two-member households in a frictional labor market, we study whether this age-dependency is driven by heterogeneous <em>needs for</em> or <em>availability of</em> spousal insurance. Our framework endogenizes asset and human capital accumulation, as well as arrival rates of job offers, and is disciplined against U.S. micro data. Counterfactuals show a strong complementarity across both margins: A large added worker effect requires both high spousal earnings potential relative to the primary earner and limited access to other means of self-insurance. Together, both margins account for the observed age differential in the added worker effect. The model predicts substantial crowding out of spousal labor supply responses by unemployment benefit extensions among young households, in line with their stronger insurance motive.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"150 ","pages":"Article 103696"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143373047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The alpha beta gamma of the labor market","authors":"Victoria Gregory , Guido Menzio , David Wiczer","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103695","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103695","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We access a long panel dataset of US workers to document the extent to which individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their pattern of transitions across employment states. We find that heterogeneity is well approximated by three latent types: <span><math><mi>α</mi></math></span>s, <span><math><mi>β</mi></math></span>s and <span><math><mi>γ</mi></math></span>s. Workers of type <span><math><mi>α</mi></math></span> leave unemployment quickly and, once they find a job, they are likely to keep it for more than 2 years. Workers of type <span><math><mi>γ</mi></math></span> find employment slowly and, once they do find a job, they are likely to leave it within 1 year. We use our empirical findings to calibrate a search-theoretic model in which workers are heterogeneous with respect to the parameters governing their employment transitions. We find that <span><math><mi>α</mi></math></span>s move quickly out of unemployment to employment because they have large gains from trade, and they are likely to stay on a job for more than 2 years because their productivity is similar in different jobs. In contrast, <span><math><mi>γ</mi></math></span>s exit unemployment slowly because their gains from trade are small, and they are likely to leave a job within 1 year because they are much more productive in a small fraction of jobs than in the majority of jobs. We find that a negative shock to aggregate productivity leads to a large and persistent increase in unemployment that is mainly driven by <span><math><mi>γ</mi></math></span>-workers. The predictions of the model align well with the unemployment dynamics observed during the Great Recession.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"150 ","pages":"Article 103695"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shaping inequality and intergenerational persistence of poverty: Free college or better schools?","authors":"Dirk Krueger , Alexander Ludwig , Irina Popova","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103694","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103694","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We evaluate the aggregate, distributional and welfare consequences of alternative government education policies to encourage college completion, such as making college free and improving funding for public schooling. To do so, we construct a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with intergenerational linkages, a higher education choice as well as a multi-stage human capital production process during childhood and adolescence with parental and government schooling investments. The model features rich cross-sectional heterogeneity, distinguishes between single and married parents, and is disciplined by US household survey data on income, wealth, education and time use. Studying the transitions induced by unexpected policy reforms we show that the “free college” and the “better schools” reform generate significant welfare gains, which take time to materialize and are lower in general than in partial equilibrium. It is optimal to combine both reforms: tuition subsidies make college affordable even for children from poorer parental backgrounds and better schools increase human capital thereby reducing dropout risk.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"150 ","pages":"Article 103694"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carlo Altavilla , Matthieu Bussière , Jordi Galí , Yuriy Gorodnichenko , Refet S. Gürkaynak , Hélène Rey
{"title":"A research program on monetary policy for Europe","authors":"Carlo Altavilla , Matthieu Bussière , Jordi Galí , Yuriy Gorodnichenko , Refet S. Gürkaynak , Hélène Rey","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103673","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103673","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>European macroeconomies remain under-researched. There are compelling reasons for this to change. European issues pose significant economic challenges, are theoretically intriguing, and provide ample data for empirical studies. In this call to action, we outline a research program focused on monetary policy questions relevant for Europe.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"147 ","pages":"Article 103673"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142177708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The underemployment trap","authors":"Jie Duan, Paul Jackson","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103633","url":null,"abstract":"Many college graduates are underemployed, i.e., work in occupations that do not require a college degree. We document that underemployed workers are less likely to transition to a college occupation the longer they are underemployed and that longer underemployment histories are associated with lower wages in college occupations. To explain these findings, we develop a directed search model with unobserved heterogeneity, occupation-specific human capital, and on the job search. Workers are uncertain about their suitability for college jobs and learn through search. Underemployment is generated by search and information frictions, as workers with a low expected job-finding probability in college occupations self-select into underemployment. Once underemployed, workers’ college occupation-specific human capital decays. A quantitative decomposition shows that unobserved heterogeneity explains most of the duration dependence in underemployment.","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"137 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141781958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}