Dollar Invoicing, Global Value Chains, and the Business Cycle Dynamics of International Trade

By Nikhil Patel and David Cook

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2022/028&r=dge

Recent literature has highlighted that international trade is mostly priced in a few key vehicle currencies and is increasingly dominated by intermediate goods and global value chains (GVCs). Taking these features into account, this paper reexamines the relationship between monetary policy, exchange rates and international trade flows. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework, it finds key differences between the response of final goods and GVC trade to both domestic and foreign shocks depending on the origin and ultimate destination of value added and the intermediate shipments involved. For example, the model shows that in response to a dollar appreciation triggered by a US interest rate increase, direct bilateral trade between non-US countries contracts more than global value chain oriented trade which feeds US final demand, and exports to the US decline much more when measured in gross as opposed to value added terms. We use granular data on GVCs at the sector level to document empirical evidence in favor of these key predictions of the model.

This is why not every currency is fit to be a vehicle currency. Not only should the underlying economy be sufficiently large, market participants should also view the monetary policy as sound and little disruptive, even if the central bank acts only in the interest of the home country. Think about that before declaring that the days of the US dollar as the global currency are over.

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Migrant Smuggling to Europe: a Matching Model

By Olivier Charlot, Claire Naiditch and Radu Vranceanu

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2022-05&r=dge

This paper develops a matching model à la Pissarides (2000) to analyze the migrant smuggling market, building on the empirical evidence related to the smuggling of migrants from the Horn of Africa and the Middle East to the European region in the last decade. The model allows us to determine the equilibrium numbers of smugglers and of incoming irregular migrants as well as the total migrant welfare. Most of the coercion-based measures targeting the smugglers achieve the reduction in the number of irregular migrants and smugglers at the expense of migrants’ overall welfare. Slightly increasing legal migration opportunities has the interesting feature of drastically reducing irregular flows, without deteriorating migrants’ welfare nor increasing the total number of migrants. The model reveals that an extremely restrictive asylum policy has similar effects in terms of the flows of irregular migrants as a quite loose one, with the largest flows of irregular migrants reached for a “middle-range” policy. Finally, the stay-home incentive of generous humanitarian policies might be partially offset by higher profits and a higher smuggling activity.

The main conclusion of this paper: no matter what you do, you will essentially have the same number of immigrants. Thus you may then do what is the best for economic well-being, which is to have regular opportunities for legal immigration. The important question is whether this result applies to other immigration flows.

Attention and Fluctuations in Macroeconomic Uncertainty

By Yu-Ting Chiang

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:93807&r=dge

This paper studies a dispersed information economy in which agents can exert costly attention to learn about an unknown aggregate state of the economy. Under certain conditions, attention and four measures of uncertainty are countercyclical: Agents pay more attention when they expect the economy to be in a bad state, and their reaction generates higher (i) aggregate output volatility, (ii) cross-sectional output dispersion, (iii) forecast dispersion about aggregate output, and (iv) subjective uncertainty about aggregate output faced by each agent. All these phenomena are prominent features of the U.S. data. When attention cost is calibrated to forecast survey data, the model generates countercyclical fluctuations in attention and uncertainty, consistent with untargeted moments from the data. Fluctuations in attention and uncertainty are higher-order properties of the model. A new method is developed to solve higher-order dynamics of the equilibrium under an infinite regress problem.

The study of how attentive people are to economic news is incredibly important, as it lies at the heart of expectation formation. Ironically, understanding the simple rules people may use is outrageously difficult. To be frank, I have a real hard time figuring out what is going on in this paper, as for other papers in this literature. I also do not know how this could be applied in the simpler fashion to the standard models. I hope someone works on that. It is really important.

(In)Efficient Commuting And Migration Choices: Theory And Policy In An Urban Search Model

By Luca Marchiori, Julien Pascal and Olivier Pierrard

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2022006&r=dge

We develop a monocentric urban search-and-matching model in which workers can choose to commute or to migrate within the region. The equilibrium endogenously allocates the population into three categories: migrants (relocate from their hometown to the city), commuters (traveling to work in the city) and home stayers (remaining in their hometown). We prove that the market equilibrium is usually not optimal: a composition externality may generate under- or over-migration with respect to the central planner’s solution, which in all cases results in under-investment in job vacancies and therefore production. We calibrate the model to the Greater Paris area to reproduce several gradients observed in the data, suggesting over-migration. We show how policy interventions can help to reduce inefficiencies.

Interesting paper with a surprising result, and I wonder whether it holds up for other cases. My anecdotal experience is that people are generally unhappy about their commute yet they choose that equilibrium because others chose it as well. That suggests to me that there is a coordination problem leading to a second best, and that more migration closer to the workplace should be encouraged.

In this context is Paris special? Again from anecdotal observation, I am struck how many people choose to live within city limits even though they work elsewhere (suburbs and even other cities). This looks like under-migration to me, but maybe I do not know representative people.

Land is back, it should be taxed, it can be taxed

By Odran Bonnet, Guillaume Chapelle, Alain Trannoy and Etienne Wasmer

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03238443&r=dge

Land is back. The increase in wealth in the second half of 20th century arose from housing and land. It should be taxed. We introduce land and housing structures in Judd’s standard setup: first best optimal taxation is achieved with a property tax on land and requires no tax on capital. With positive taxes on housing rents, a first best is still possible but with subsidies to rental housing investments, and either with differential land tax rates or with a tax on imputed rents. It can be taxed. Even absent land taxes, one can tax it indirectly and reach a Ramsey-second best still with no tax on capital and positive housing rent taxes in the steady-state. This result extends to the dynamics under restrictions on parameters.

In the ongoing saga about optimal capital taxation, the new player in town is land and it changes once more everything. And, of course, land is important, is often inherited and its value more determined by externalities than by what the owner puts into it. In other words, taxing it makes sense in more than a Georgian way. Interestingly, the first best leads to no tax on capital.

This literature is making me dizzy. I need someone to put together a RePEc Biblio topic about it.