This paper asks whether there are welfare gains from additional redistribution. First, it derives a sufficient condition for the existence of welfare gains from a small increase in lump-sum transfers financed by a uniform increase in labor income taxes.
... See More + A calibration suggests that, even under very conservative assumptions, most countries would benefit from such a scheme. Second, it asks whether, given existing tax revenues, there are gains from diverting public funds from government investment projects toward redistributive programs. The analysis suggests that the answer is highly sensitive to parameter values and the rate of return on government investment.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8003 MAR 13, 2017
Is there a “middle-income trap”? Theory suggests that the determinants of growth at low and high income levels may be different. If countries struggle to transition from growth strategies that are effective at low income levels to growth strategies that are effective at high income levels, they may stagnate at some middle income level; this phenomenon can be thought of as a “middle-income trap.”
... See More + Defining income levels based on per capita gross domestic product relative to the United States, we do not find evidence for (unusual) stagnation at any particular middle income level. However, we do find evidence that the determinants of growth at low and high income levels differ. These findings suggest a mixed conclusion: middle-income countries may need to change growth strategies in order to transition smoothly to high income growth strategies, but this can be done smoothly and does not imply the existence of a middle-income trap.
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Journal Article 113004 MAY 01, 2016
J. Bulman,David; Eden,Maya; Nguyen,Ha MinhDisclosed
Is a five-day workweek followed by a two-day weekend a socially optimal schedule? This paper presents a model in which labor productivity and the marginal utility of leisure evolve endogenously over the workweek.
... See More + Labor productivity is shaped by two forces: restfulness, which decreases over the workweek, and memory, which improves over the workweek. The structural parameters of the model are disciplined using daily variation in electricity usage per worker. The results suggest that increases in the ratio of vacation to workdays lead to output losses. A calibration of the model suggests that a 2-3 day workweek followed by a 1 day weekend can increase welfare.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7598 MAR 14, 2016
This paper studies the possibility of using financial regulation that prohibits the use of money substitutes as a tool for mitigating the adverse effects of deviations from the Friedman rule.
... See More + When inflation is not too high regulation aimed at eliminating money substitutes improves welfare by economizing on transaction costs. The gains from regulation depend on the distribution of income and the level of direct taxation. The area under the demand for money curve is equal to the welfare cost of inflation only when there are no direct taxes and no proportional intermediation cost: otherwise, the area under the demand curve overstates the welfare cost of inflation when money substitutes are not important and understates the welfare cost when money substitutes are important.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7553 FEB 02, 2016
This paper establishes that the rise in the income share of information and communication technology accounts for half of the decline in labor income share in the United States.
... See More + This decline can be decomposed into a sharp decline in the income share of “routine” labor—which is relatively more prone to automation—and a milder rise in the non-routine share. Quantitatively, this decomposition suggests large effects of information and communication technology on the income distribution within labor, but only moderate effects on the distribution of income between capital and labor. A production structure calibrated to match these trends suggests modest aggregate welfare gains from automation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7487 NOV 12, 2015
Conventional wisdom suggests too little information and communication technologies (ICT) in poor countries. Indeed, within 70 countries at various levels of development, there is a positive relationship between income per capita and the capital share of ICT.
... See More + While this regularity is consistent with explanations based on technology adoption lags and ICT-labor substitutability, there is little empirical support for these hypotheses. Instead, the paper establishes that this regularity can be fully accounted for by (a) relatively higher ICT prices in low-income countries and (b) industrial composition.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7352 JUN 30, 2015
Is there a "middle income trap"? Theory suggests that the determinants of growth at low and high income levels may be different. If countries struggle to transition from growth strategies that are effective at low income levels to growth strategies that are effective at high income levels, they may stagnate at some middle income level; this phenomenon can be thought of as a "middle income trap."
... See More + This paper does not find evidence for (unusual) stagnation at any particular middle income level. However, it does find evidence that the determinants of growth at low and high income levels differ. These findings suggest a mixed conclusion: middle-income countries may need to change growth strategies to transition smoothly to high-income growth strategies, but this can be done smoothly and does not imply the existence of a middle income trap.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7104 NOV 01, 2014
In countries with limited access to finance, firms accumulate retained earnings to finance indivisible investment projects. McKinnon (1973) illustrates that when cash is used as a primary store of value, inflation may discourage investment as it increases the cost of accumulating retained earnings.
... See More + This paper formalizes this argument in a dynamic framework and provides a simple calibration of the model that suggests sizable effects of inflation on investment. The mechanism is particularly relevant for small firms, as firms with lower cash flows must accumulate retained earnings for longer periods of time to meet the price of indivisible investment goods. Consistent with the model, empirical evidence suggests that inflation disproportionately reduces investment in small firms.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6972 JUL 01, 2014
This paper estimates the effect of government investment on private investment in a sample of 39 low-income countries. Fluctuations in a predetermined component of disbursements on loans from official creditors to developing country governments are used as an instrument for fluctuations in public investment.
... See More + The analysis finds evidence of "crowding in": an extra dollar of government investment raises private investment by roughly two dollars, and output by 1.5 dollars. To understand the implications for the return to public investment, a CES production function with public and private capital as inputs is calibrated. For most countries in the sample, the returns to government investment exceed the world interest rate. However, for some countries that already have high government investment rates, the return to further investment is below the world interest rate.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6781 FEB 01, 2014
This paper proposes a measure of the extent to which a financial sector is connected to the real economy. The Measure of Connectedness is a measure of the composition of assets, namely the share of credit to the non-financial sectors over the total credit market instruments.
... See More + The aggregate Measure of Connectedness for the United States declines by about 27 percent in the period 1952-2009. The authors suggest that this increase in disconnectedness between the financial sector and the real economy may have dampened the sensitivity of the real economy to monetary shocks. They present a stylized model that illustrates how interbank trading can reduce the sensitivity of lending to the entrepreneur's net worth, thereby dampening the credit channel transmission of monetary policy. The Measure of Connectedness is interacted with both a structural vector autoregressive model and a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model for the United States economy. The analysis establishes that the impulse responses to monetary policy shocks are dampened as the level of connection declines.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6667 OCT 01, 2013
This paper presents a model of global liquidity shortages. Liquid claims are enforceable promises that play a transaction role. Since developed economies have a comparative advantage in creating liquidity, they export liquid claims to emerging economies, resulting in a permanent current account deficit.
... See More + This model suggests that unrestricted liquidity flows are (a) welfare reducing for emerging economies and (b) Pareto inefficient. The inefficiency results both from excessive investment for the purpose of creating collateral-backed liquid claims, and from excessive global fragility with respect to collateral shocks.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6462 MAY 01, 2013
This paper uses a large cross-country dataset to empirically examine factors associated with sovereign defaults on external private creditors and expropriation of foreign direct investments in developing countries since the 1970s.
... See More + In the long run, sovereign defaults and expropriations are likely to occur in the same countries. In the short run, however, these events are uncorrelated. Defaults are more likely to occur following periods of rapid debt accumulation, when growth is low, and in countries with weak policy performance, and defaults are not strongly persistent over time. In contrast, expropriations are not systematically related to the level of foreign direct investment, to growth, or to policy performance. Expropriations are however less likely under right-wing governments, and are strongly persistent over time. There is also little evidence that a history of recent defaults is associated with expropriations, and vice versa. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for models that emphasize retaliation as means for sustaining sovereign borrowing and foreign investment in equilibrium, as well as the implications for political risk insurance against the two types of events.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6218 OCT 01, 2012
Does an unregulated financial system absorb too many productive inputs? This paper studies this question in the context of a dynamic model with heterogeneous producers.
... See More + In the absence of a financial system, the only way to purchase inputs is using internal funds. Producers are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks, and will decide to produce only if their productivity is high enough. Otherwise, they will hold money. A financial intermediation technology allows producers to purchase inputs in excess of their internal funds, by borrowing from unproductive agents. However, intermediation requires the use of costly monitoring services. In equilibrium, intermediation increases the money in circulation and raises nominal prices, thereby reducing the value of internal funds and making producers increasingly reliant on costly monitoring services. For this reason, society is better off when intermediation is restricted.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6059 MAY 01, 2012
This paper studies the issue of real exchange rate misalignment and the difficulties in settling international real exchange rate disputes. The authors show theoretically that determining when a country should be sanctioned for real exchange rate "manipulations" is difficult: in some situations a country's real exchange rate targeting can be beneficial to other countries, while in others it is not.
... See More + Regardless, it is difficult to establish whether a misaligned real exchange rate is intentionally manipulated rather than unintentionally caused by other policies or by various distortions in the economy. The paper continues by illustrating the difficulty in measuring real exchange rate misalignment, and provides a critical assessment of existing methodologies. It concludes by proposing a new method for measuring real exchange rate misalignment based on differences in marginal products between producers of tradable and non-tradable goods.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6045 APR 01, 2012
Why are emerging economies excessively vulnerable to shocks to external funding? What was the role of financial flows from emerging to developed economies in setting the stage for the subprime crisis?
... See More + This paper addresses these questions in a simple general equilibrium framework that emphasizes the aggregate implications of the misallocation of funds on the micro level. The analysis shows that the misallocation of funds amplifies volatility even in a closed economy. Financial integration between relatively distorted emerging economies and relatively undistorted developed economies leads to a further divergence in volatility, thereby providing a new and simple explanation for the divergent trends in output volatility up to the recent crisis. In the integrated environment, cheap funding leads to an endogenous deterioration of the financial system in developed economies. These predictions are consistent with a wide variety of microfoundations, in which distortions cause productive projects to be relatively more sensitive to aggregate shocks. The paper provides some empirical evidence for these microfoundations.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5929 JAN 01, 2012
