Working Papers
2022
December 16, 2022
Monetary Policy and Credit Card Spending
Description: We analyze the impact of monetary policy on consumer spending using credit card data. Because of their high frequency, these data improve identification and allow for a precise characterization of the transmission lags. We find that shocks to short-term interest rates affect spending much more rapidly than shocks to longer-term interest rates. We also detect significant asymmetries. While interest rate rises are contractionary, interest rate cuts are unable to lift spending. Finally, by exploiting the disaggregation of credit card data, we uncover considerable heterogeneity in the effects of monetary policy across spending categories and a stronger impact on higher-income users.
December 16, 2022
A Framework for Comparing Climate Mitigation Policies Across Countries
Description: There is growing interest in international coordination over climate mitigation policy. Climate clubs or international carbon price floors could complement the Paris Agreement by helping to deliver the near-term cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions needed to contain global warming to 1.5 to 2oC. To ensure inclusivity, these arrangements need to account for varying mitigation policies across countries, including carbon pricing, fuel taxes, subsidy reform, and non-pricing approaches like regulations. A transparent methodology is needed to compare and monitor mitigation effort by countries implementing diverse policy packages. This paper presents and illustrates a methodology for converting climate mitigation policies and targets into their carbon price equivalents and applies it to the Group of Twenty (G20) countries.
December 9, 2022
Financial Constraints, Productivity, and Investment: Evidence from Lithuania
Description: This paper studies the relation between firms' access to finance, labor productivity and investment using Lithuanian firm-level data from 2000–2018. To do so, we construct a measure of financial constraints. We estimate that, given firm characteristics, removing these constraints can improve average productivity and investment of firms in Lithuania by 0.51 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively. Our results further suggest that policies targeting firm age and size together will be more effective in mitigating the impact of financial constraints as the relationship between firm age and size with financial constraints exhibits non-linearities.
December 9, 2022
Economic Scarring: Channels and Policy Implications
Description: This paper documents the existence of medium-to-long term output losses following large crises using panel data that cover 192 countries from 1970 to 2015 and shows that the magnitudes of economic scarring depend on the nature of the shock, economic activity, and pre-crisis conditions. It also provides a thorough review of potential channels that can lead to scarring and presents novel empirical evidence on the significance of supply-side channels using cross-country sectoral-level data. Finally, the paper discusses policy implications based on the empirical findings.
December 9, 2022
The Divergent Dynamics of Labor Market Power in Europe
Description: We use firm-level data from 10 European countries to establish several new stylized facts about firms’ labor market power. First, we find the pervasive presence of labor market power across countries and sectors, measured by average and median markdowns above unity. Second, focusing on the dynamics, we find that weighted average markdowns have increased 1.3 percent between 2000 and 2017. However, median and unweighted average markdowns have actually decreased over the same time period, suggesting the existence of divergent paths across the markdown distribution. Third, we show that high-markdown firms tend to have a large footprint in both their product and input (labor) markets, and are most commonly listed and found among services sectors. Finally, a Melitz-Polanec decomposition of the change in weighted average markdown finds that the increase has been driven by a reallocation of resources towards high-markdown incumbents and by the extensive margin via the net entry of high-markdown firms while, in contrast, there was a decline in within-firm markdowns. Our findings highlight the importance of using granular and broad-based data for a thorough analysis of firms’ labor market power.
December 9, 2022
Green Bond Pricing and Greenwashing under Asymmetric Information
Description: We analyze the corporate green bond market under a rational framework without an innate green preference, using a simple adverse selection model. Firms can use green bonds to signal their green credentials to investors. Transition risk stems from uncertainty over the introduction of carbon pricing. We show that green bonds have a price premium over conventional bonds when there are information asymmetry, transition risk, and it is costly to engage in greenwashing, that is, false or exaggerated claims of being green. The extent of greenwashing in the market is a function of the green bond premium. A swift and gradual implementation of carbon pricing generates a small green bond premium and a low level of greenwashing, while delayed and large carbon pricing has an ambiguous effect on both. The model provides a rich set of policy implications, notably the need for swift action on carbon pricing and strong information disclosures and regulations to ensure the integrity of green bonds.
December 9, 2022
Intergenerational Transmission of Education in a Developing Country: Evidence from A Mass Education Program in Vietnam
Description: We study the long-run and multi-generational effects of a mass education program in Vietnam during the First Indochina War (1946-1954). Difference-in-difference estimations indicate that the children of mothers exposed to the education program had an average of 0.9 more years of education. We argue that the impact is via mother’s education. An additional year of maternal education increases children’s education by up to 0.65 years, a stronger effect than those found in the existing literature. Better household lifestyles and a stronger focus on education are possible transmission pathways.
December 9, 2022
The Anatomy of Banks’ IT Investments: Drivers and Implications
Description: This paper relies on administrative data to study determinants and implications of US banks’ Information Technology (IT) investments, which have increased six-fold over two decades. Large and small banks had similar IT expenses a decade ago. Since then, large banks sharply increased their spending, especially those which were more exposed to competition from fintech lenders. Other local-level and bank-level factors, such as county income and bank income sources, also contribute to explain the heterogeneity in IT investments. Analysis of the mortgage market reveals that fintechs’ lending behavior is more similar to that of non-bank financial intermediaries rather than IT-savvy banks, suggesting that factors other than technology are responsible for the differences between banks and other lenders. However, both IT-savvy banks and fintech lend to lower income borrowers, pointing towards benefits for financial inclusion from higher IT adoption. Banks’ IT investments are also shown to matter for the responsiveness of bank lending to monetary policy.
December 9, 2022
Climate Policy Options: A Comparison of Economic Performance
Description: We use a global computable general equilibrium model to compare the economic performance of alternative climate policies along multiple dimensions, including macroeconomic outcomes, energy prices, and trade competitiveness. Carbon pricing which keeps the aggregate cost lower and preserves better the overall competitiveness than across-the-board regulation is the first-best policy, especially in energy intensive and trade exposed industries. Regulations and feebates are good alternatives in the power sector, where technological substitution is possible. Feed-in subsidies, if used alone, are not cost effective.
December 9, 2022
Here Comes the Change: The Role of Global and Domestic Factors in Post-Pandemic Inflation in Europe
Description: Global inflation has surged to 7.5 percent in August 2022, from an average of 2.1 percent in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening to become an entrenched phenomenon. This paper disentangles the confluence of contributing factors to the post-pandemic rise in consumer price inflation, using monthly data and a battery of econometric methodologies covering a panel of 30 European countries over the period 2002-2022. We find that while global factors continue to shape inflation dynamics throughout Europe, country-specific factors, including monetary and fiscal policy responses to the crisis, have also gained greater prominence in determining consumer price inflation during the pandemic period. Coupled with increasing persistence in inflation, these structural shifts call for significant and an extended period of monetary tightening and fiscal realignment.