We examine two key channels through which commodity price super-cycles affect the economy. Higher commodity prices increase domestic demand (wealth channel), disproportionately benefiting nonexporters, and induce wage increases (cost channel) especially among unskilled workers, hurting...

We study the uneven effects of a commodity boom, documenting its impact across workers based on their skill and on the region where they live. To this end, we develop a dynamic quantitative model of an economy with many regions connected through interregional trade and migration. Empirically, we...

We study the role of firms' political influence on the effectiveness of government spending using ARRA as a laboratory. Through an IV approach, we show that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of politically connected spending lowers the job creation effect of stimulus by 33 percent at...

We examine the channels through which commodity price super-cycles affect the economy. Exploiting regional variation in exposure to commodity price shocks and administrative firm-level data from Brazil we disentangle two transmission channels. Higher commodity prices increase domestic demand...