How do regional productivity shocks or transportation infrastructure improvements affect aggregate welfare? In a general class of spatial equilibrium models, we provide a formula for aggregate welfare changes, decomposed into terms associated with (i) technology (Fogel 1964, Hulten 1978), (ii)...

We analyze a model of green technological transition along a supply chain. The model generates a unique equilibrium for given initial conditions but multiple steady-states. We show that: (i) even in the presence of Pigouvian environmental taxation, targeted sectoral subsidies are generally...

We study the consequences of "regime-induced" exchange rate depreciations by comparing outcomes for peggers versus floaters to the US dollar in response to a dollar depreciation. Pegger currencies depreciate relative to floater currencies and these depreciations are strongly expansionary. The...

This paper examines the efficiency of a decentralized equilibrium in a broad class of random-search job-ladder models. We decompose the source of inefficiency into two margins: (i) the investment margin, that is, the difference between the private and social benefit of job creation given the...

We show that firms' nominal required returns to capital (i.e., their discount rates) are sticky with respect to expected inflation. Such nominally sticky discount rates imply that increases in expected inflation directly lower firms' real discount rates and thereby raise real investment. We...

We study the relationship between international trade and development in a model where countries differ in their capability, goods differ in their complexity, and capability growth is a function of a country's pattern of specialization. Theoretically, we show that it is possible for...

Business cycle recoveries have slowed in recent decades. This slowdown comes entirely from female employment: as women's employment rates converged towards men's over the past half-century, the growth rate of female employment slowed. We ask whether this slowdown in female employment caused the...

We develop a dynamic quantitative model of trade and labor adjustment, incorporating nominal wage rigidity and consumption-saving decisions, to study how China's currency peg interacted with its rapid growth in shaping the US economy. We show that the peg temporarily boosts China's export growth...

We provide new theory and evidence on the role of consumption access in understanding the agglomeration of economic activity. We combine smartphone data that records user location every 5 minutes of the day with economic census data on the location of service-sector establishments to measure...