Economic integration, through greater capital market integration, will induce higher regional specialization in production, rendering regional shocks less symmetric. To support this claim empirically, we develop a utility based measure of shock asymmetry and calculate it for each U.S. state. We...

What are the cyclical properties of U.S. state and local government fiscal policy? The budget surplus of local and, in particular, state governments is procyclical, smoothing disposable income and consumption of state residents. This happens over both short- and medium-term horizons. Procyclical...

We provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. To the best of our knowledge, this well-established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before. Our empirical procedure is summarized as follows. First, we construct a measure of...

We remove the aggregate US-wide component in US state level disposable income and consumption and find that state-specific consumption exhibits substantially less excess sensitivity to lagged state-specific disposable income than if the aggregate component is not controlled for. This is evidence...

State-level consumption exhibits excess sensitivity to lagged income to the same extent as U.S. aggregate data, but state-specific (idiosyncratic) consumption exhibits substantially less sensitivity to lagged state-specific incomea result that also holds for Canadian provinces. We propose the...

State-level consumption exhibits excess sensitivity to lagged income to the same extent as US aggregate data, but state-specific (idiosyncratic) consumption exhibits substantially less sensitivity to lagged stste-specific income - a result that also holds for Canadian provinces. We propose the...

This paper investigates whether risk sharing, measured as income and consumption smoothing, among countries in the EU and the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has increased since the adoption of the euro. We ask: Have the recent increase in foreign equity and debt holdings been...

Regions within the United States routinely experience economic fluctuations that differ from those of other regions. For example, in the past few years, falling wheat prices have slowed growth in the value of total output in Kansas. Such developments can pose concerns for policymakers because...