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Working Paper
Policy Rules and Large Crises in Emerging Markets
Emerging countries have increasingly adopted rules to discipline government policy. The COVID-19 shock led to widespread suspension and modification of these rules. We study rules and flexibility in a sovereign default model with domestic fiscal and monetary policies and long-term external debt. We find welfare gains from adopting monetary targets and debt limits during normal times. Though government policy cannot itself counteract fundamental shocks hitting the economy, the adoption of rules has a significant impact on policy, macroeconomic outcomes and welfare during large, unexpected ...
Journal Article
Assessing the Costs of Rolling Over Government Debt
The US government has $21.4 trillion in outstanding Treasury debt in bills, notes, and bonds. Given the federal funds rate is up 4-5% over the past year, how expensive will it be to roll over maturing Treasury debt at these higher rates?
Working Paper
Liquidity and Investment in General Equilibrium
This paper studies the implications of trading frictions in financial markets for firms' investment and dividend choices and their aggregate consequences. When equity shares trade in frictional asset markets, the firm's problem is time-inconsistent, and it is as if it faces quasi-hyperbolic discounting. The transmission of trading frictions to the real economy crucially depends on the firms' ability to commit. In a calibrated economy without commitment, larger trading frictions imply lower capital and production. In contrast, if firms can commit, trading frictions affect asset prices but have ...
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Implications of Uniform Pricing
We compile a new database of grocery prices in Argentina, with over 9 million observations per day. We find uniform pricing both within and across regions—i.e., product prices almost do not vary within stores of a chain. Uniform pricing implies that prices would not change with regional conditions or shocks, particularly so if chains operate in several regions. We confirm this hypothesis using employment data. While prices in stores of chains operating almost exclusively in one region do react to changes in regional employment, stores of chains that operate in many regions do not. Finally, ...
Journal Article
What Is Driving Student Debt in the Eighth District?
Tuition appears to be a bigger driver of student debt growth in the Eighth District than in the U.S. as a whole.
Working Paper
Explaining Intergenerational Mobility: The Role of Fertility and Family Transfers
Poor families have more children and transfer less resources to them. This suggests that family decisions about fertility and transfers dampen intergenerational mobility. To evaluate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, we extend the standard heterogeneous agent life cycle model with earnings risk and credit constraints to allow for endogenous fertility, family transfers, and education. The model, estimated to the US in the 2000s, implies that a counterfactual flat income-fertility profile would-through the equalization of initial conditions-increase intergenerational mobility by ...
Working Paper
The Tail that Wags the Economy: Beliefs and Persistent Stagnation
The Great Recession was a deep downturn with long-lasting effects on credit, employment and output. While narratives about its causes abound, the persistence of GDP below pre-crisis trends remains puzzling. We propose a simple persistence mechanism that can be quantified and combined with existing models. Our key premise is that agents don't know the true distribution of shocks, but use data to estimate it non-parametrically. Then, transitory events, especially extreme ones, generate persistent changes in beliefs and macro outcomes. Embedding this mechanism in a neoclassical model, we find ...
Working Paper
Anatomy of Corporate Credit Spreads: The Great Recession vs. COVID-19
We compare the evolution of corporate credit spreads during the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. The two crises featured increases of similar magnitudes in the median and cross-sectional dispersion of credit spreads, but the pandemic was short-lived and different sectors were affected. The micro-data reveal larger differences between the two episodes: the Great Recession featured an increase in the across-firm dispersion, and leverage was an important predictor of credit spreads. Differently, the COVID-19 crisis displayed a larger increase in within-firm dispersion, and funding ...
Working Paper
Credit and Liquidity Policies during Large Crises
We compare firms’ financials during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. While the two crises featured similar increases in credit spreads, debt and liquid assets decreased during the GFC but increased during COVID-19. In the cross-section, leverage was the primary determinant of credit spreads and investment during the GFC, but liquidity was more important during COVID-19. We augment a quantitative model of firm capital structure with a motive to hold liquid assets. The GFC resembled a combination of productivity and financial shocks, while COVID-19 also featured liquidity ...
Working Paper
Domestic Policies and Sovereign Default
A model with two essential elements, sovereign default and distortionary fiscal and monetary policies, explains the interaction between sovereign debt, default risk and inflation in emerging countries. We derive conditions under which monetary policy is actively used to support fiscal policy and characterize the intertemporal tradeoffs that determine the choice of debt. We show that in response to adverse shocks to the terms of trade or productivity, governments reduce debt and deficits, and increase inflation and currency depreciation rates, matching the patterns observed in the data for ...