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Survey expectations, adaptive learning and inflation dynamics
Rychalovska, Y. ; Slobodyan, Sergey ; Wouters, R.
The use of survey information on inflation expectations as an observable in a DSGE model can substantially refine identification of the shocks that drive inflation. Optimal integration of the survey information improves the model forecast for inflation and for other macroeconomic variables. Models with expectations based on an Adaptive Learning setup can exploit survey information more efficiently than their Rational Expectations counterparts. The resulting time-variation in the perceived inflation target, in inflation persistence, and in the sensitivity of inflation to various shocks provide a rich and consistent description of the joint dynamics of realized and expected inflation. Our framework produces a reasonable interpretation of the post-Covid inflation dynamics. Our learning model successfully identifies the more persistent nature of the recent inflation surge.
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Financial skills and search in the mortgage market
Cota, Marta ; Šterc, Ante
Are households with low financial skills disadvantaged in the mortgage market? Using stochastic record linking, we construct a unique U.S. dataset encompassing a rich set of mortgage details and borrowers’ characteristics, including their objective financial literacy measure. We find that households with low financial literacy are up to 4% more likely to search less and lock in at 15-20 b.p. higher rates. Upon origination, unskilled borrowers face a 35-45% higher mortgage delinquency and end up with a 30% lower likelihood of refinancing. Overall, for a $100,000 loan, the potential losses from low financial literacy are more than $9,329 over the mortgage duration. To understand how financial education, more accessible mortgages, or mortgage rate changes affect households with low financial literacy, we formulate and calibrate a mortgage search model with heterogeneous search frictions and endogenous financial skills. Our model estimates show that search intensity and financial skill variations contribute to 55% and 10% of mortgage rate variations, respectively. We find that i) more accessible mortgages lead to a higher delinquency risk among low-skilled households, ii) financial education mitigates the adverse effects of increased accessibility, and iii) low mortgage rates favor high-skilled homeowners and, by reinforcing refinancing activity, deepen consumption differences across different financial skill levels.
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COVID-19 and political preferences through stages of the pandemic: the case of the Czech Republic
Bičáková, Alena ; Jurajda, Štěpán
We track the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on political preferences through ‘high’ and ‘low’ phases of the pandemic. We ask about the effects of the health and the economic costs of the pandemic measured at both personal and municipality levels. Consistent with the literature, we estimate effects suggestive of political accountability of leaders during ‘high’ pandemic phases. However, we also find that the pandemic political accountability effects are mostly short-lived, and do not extend to the first post-pandemic elections.
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Disappearing stepping stones: technological change and career paths
Kashkarov, Daniil ; Artemev, V.
Which career paths lead workers towards high-skilled non-routine cognitive occupations? Using PSID data, we show that, for a significant share of workers, a career path towards non-routine cognitive occupations goes through middle-skilled routine occupations, with the majority going through a subset of routine cognitive occupations. We then argue that the decline in employment in routine cognitive occupations due to routine-biased technological change can negatively affect the chances of younger cohorts joining high-skilled occupations. To test this hypothesis, we develop a structural occupational choice model that endogenously generates realistic career paths and estimate it using PSID data and job ad data from three major US outlets covering the period from 1940 to 2000. Our estimations suggest that, on average, 6% of workers ending up in non-routine cognitive occupations use routine cognitive occupations as stepping stones that allow them to maintain and accumulate human capital and experience relevant for later employment in high-skilled occupations. A fall in employment opportunities in routine cognitive occupations over the period of the most intensive routine-biased technological change led to at least 1.37 million lost high-skilled workers who got stuck in less skilled occupations.
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Matching to suppliers in the production network: an empirical framework
Alfaro-Ureña, A. ; Zacchia, Paolo
This paper develops a framework for the empirical analysis of the determinants of input supplier choice on the extensive margin using firm-to-firm transaction data. Building on a theoretical model of production network formation, we characterize the assumptions that enable a transformation of the multinomial logit likelihood function from which the seller fixed effects, which encode the seller marginal costs, vanish. This transformation conditions, for each subnetwork restricted to one supplier industry, on the out-degree of sellers (a sufficient statistic for the seller fixed effect) and the in-degree of buyers (which is pinned down by technology and by “make-or-buy” decisions). This approach delivers a consistent estimator for the effect of dyadic explanatory variables, which in our model are interpreted as matching frictions, on the supplier choice probability. The estimator is easy to implement and in Monte Carlo simulations it outperforms alternatives based on group fixed effects. In an empirical application about the effect of a major Costa Rican infrastructural project on firm-to-firm connections, our approach yields estimates typically much smaller in magnitude than those from naive multinomial logit.
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The American origin of the French Revolution
Ottinger, Sebastian ; Rosenberger, L.
We show that the French combatants’ exposure to the United States increased support for the French Revolution a decade later. French regions from which more American combatants originated had more revolts against feudal institutions, revolutionary societies, volunteers for the revolutionary army, and emigrants from the Old Regime’s elite. To establish causality, we exploit two historical coincidences: i) originally, a French army of seven and a half thousand was ready to sail, but one-third did not, ii) among those deployed, only some regiments were stationed in New England. Only combatants exposed to New England affected the French Revolution after their return.
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Gender gap in reported childcare preferences among parents
Pertold, Filip ; Sinani, S. ; Šoltés, M.
The child penalty explains the majority of gender employment and wage gaps, however, less is known about the factors driving the child penalty itself. In this paper, we study the gender gap in childcare preferences as a potential factor that contributes to the child penalty. We surveyed Czech parents and elicited the minimal compensation they would require to stay home to care for a child. Mothers require less compensation for childcare than fathers. The estimated gender gap in childcare preferences is CZK 2,500 monthly, 7.6% of the median female wage, and cannot be explained by differences in labor market opportunities or prosocial motives to care for a family member. We further document widespread misperception of fathers’ preferences, as respondents incorrectly expect fathers to require less to care for a child than to care for an elderly parent.\n
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Hostility, population sorting, and backwardness: quasi-experimental evidence from the Red Army after WWII
Ochsner, Christian
Does a short episode of conflict or exposure to hostile troops cause regional economic backwardness, and if so, why and how does it persist? I answer these questions by exploiting economic differences across the idiosyncratic and short-lived line of contact between the Red Army and the Western Allies in South Austria at the end of WWII. Spatial regression discontinuity estimates show that hostile presence of the Red Army for 74 days caused an immediate relative population decline of around 12%, amplified to 25% by today. Age-specific migration patterns and subsequent fertility differences explain the multiplying effects. Sector development and measures of local labor productivity in 2011 also lag behind in regions briefly seized by the Red Army, likely driven by skill-specific migration and hampered investment patterns after WWII. The findings provide novel insights into the long-run effects of wars and conflicts, and point to the isolated role of the Red Army’s hostile actions after WWII to understand the European economic East-West divide.\n
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Human capital affects religious identity: causal evidence from Kenya
Alfonsi, L. ; Bauer, Michal ; Chytilová, Julie ; Miguel, E.
We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over twenty years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that has exogenously boosted education and living standards. The main finding is that the program reduces the likelihood of membership in a Pentecostal denomination up to 20 years later when respondents are in their mid-thirties, while there is a comparable increase in membership in traditional Christian denominations. The effect is concentrated and statistically significant among a sub-group of participants who benefited most from the program in terms of increased education and income. The effects are unlikely due to increased secularization, because the program does not reduce measures of religiosity. The results help explain why the global growth of the Pentecostal movement, sometimes described a “New Reformation”, is centered in low-income communities.
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Professional survey forecasts and expectations in DSGE models
Rychalovska, Y. ; Slobodyan, Sergey ; Wouters, R.
In this paper, we demonstrate the usefulness of survey data for macroeconomic analysis and propose a strategy to integrate and efficiently utilize information from surveys in the DSGE setup. We extend the set of observable variables to include the data on consumption, investment, output, and inflation expectations, as measured by the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). By doing so, we aim to discipline the dynamics of model-based expectations and evaluate alternative belief models. Our approach to exploit the timely information from surveys is based on re-specification of structural shocks into persistent and transitory components. Due to the SPF, we are able to improve identification of fundamental shocks and predictive power of the model by separating the sources of low and high frequency volatility. Furthermore, we show that models with an imperfectly-rational expectation formation mechanism based on Adaptive Learning (AL) can reduce important limitations implied by the Rational Expectation (RE) hypothesis. More specifically, our models based on belief updating can better capture macroeconomic trend shifts and, as a result, achieve superior long-term predictions. In addition, the AL mechanism can produce realistic time variation in the transmission of shocks and perceived macro-economic volatility, which allows the model to better explain the investment dynamics. Finally, AL models, which relax the RE constraint of internal consistency between the agents’ and model forecasts, can reproduce the main features of agents’ predictions in line with SPF evidence and, at the same time, can generate improved model forecasts, thus diminishing possible inefficiencies present in surveys.
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