Department of Economics

This paper exploits a new source of variation in Head Start funding to identify the program's long-term effects. In 1965 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties in the U.S. to develop Head Start funding proposals, but did not provide similar assistance to other counties. We show that the result is a substantial difference in Head Start funding and participation rates in those counties just above and below OEO's poverty-rate cutoff for technical assistance, differences that seem to have persisted through at least the 1970’s. This discontinuity in Head Start funding and participation are associated with discontinuities in educational attainment.

Many states are under court-order to reduce local disparities in education spending. While a substantial body of literature suggests that these orders and the resulting school finance equalizations have increased the level and progressivity of state education spending, there is little evidence on the broader effects of such measures on the change in total resources available not only for schools, but for other local government programs as well. When states spend more on education, both state and local budget constraints change, which may affect both state and local spending and revenue decisions. We find that while mandated school finance equalizations increase both the level and progressivity of state spending on education, states finance the required increase in education spending in part by reducing their aid to localities for other programs. Local governments, in turn, respond to the increases in state taxation and spending by reducing both their own revenue-raising and their own spending on education and on other programs. Thus, while state education aid does increase total spending on education, it does so at the expense of drawing resources away from spending on programs like public welfare, highways, and hospitals. These findings provide insight not only into the ultimate incidence of mandated increases in state education aid, but more broadly into the effectiveness of using earmarked funds to achieve redistribution.

In this paper, we estimate a VAR model to present an empirical finding that an unexpected rise in the federal funds rate decreases the ratio of sales to stocks available for sales, while it increases finished goods inventories. In addition, dynamic responses of these variables reach their peaks several quarters after a monetary shock. In order to understand the ob- served relationship between monetary policy and finished goods inventories, we allow for the accumulation of finished goods inventories in an optimizing sticky price model, where prices are set in a staggered fashion. In our model, holding finished inventories helps firms to generate more sales at given their prices. We then show that the model can generate the observed relationship between monetary shocks and finished goods inventories. Furthermore, we find that allowing for inventory holdings leads to a Phillips curve equation, which makes the inflation rate dependent on the expected present-value of future marginal cost as well as the current period's marginal cost and the expected rate of future inflation.

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is widely used to identify and quantify the separate contributions of group differences in measurable characteristics, such as education, experience, marital status, and geographical differences to racial and gender gaps in outcomes.  The technique cannot be used directly, however, if the outcome is binary and the coefficients are from a logit or probit model.  I describe a relatively simple method of performing a decomposition that uses estimates from a logit or probit model.  Expanding on the original application of the technique in Fairlie (1999), I provide a more thorough discussion of how to apply the technique, an analysis of the sensitivity of the decomposition estimates to different parameters, and the calculation of standard errors.  I also compare the estimates to Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition estimates and discuss an example of when the Blinder-Oaxaca technique may be problematic.

At the onset of the COVID-19 economic crisis, as in other crisis episodes, we observed a rapid appreciation of "safe haven" currencies. We quantify currency-induced balance sheet valuation effects for aggregate external positions as well as for broadly defined asset classes for the first quarter and the full year 2020. To do so, we use new data on the currency composition of cross-border assets and liabilities for 46 countries. In contrast with past financial crises, many emerging markets did not experience losses on their aggregate external balance sheets despite facing a domestic currency depreciation. This was partly due to currency-induced valuation gains on equity positions offsetting losses on debt positions, and partly due to reduced currency mismatch on their external debt positions. We conduct the stock-flow reconciliation of net international investment positions to measure overall valuation effects and compute the proportion that is due to changes in currency values. For about half of the countries in our sample, currency-induced valuation effects were substantial, representing over 50 percent of total valuation effects in 2020Q1 and the full year 2020.

The status of real and financial integration of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is investigated using monthly data on one-month interbank rates, exchange rates, and prices. Specifically, the degree of integration is assessed based on the empirical validity of real interest parity, uncovered interest parity, and relative purchasing power parity. There is evidence these parity conditions tend to hold over longer periods, although they do not hold instantaneously. Overall, the magnitude of deviations from the parity conditions is shrinking over time. In particular, China and Hong Kong appear to have experienced significant increases in integration during the sample period. It is also found that exchange rate variability plays a major role in determining the variability of deviations from these parity conditions.

Developing Asia experienced a sharp surge in foreign currency reserves prior to the 2008-9 crisis.The global crisis has been associated with an unprecedented rise of swap agreements betweencentral banks of larger economies and their counterparts in smaller economies. We explorewhether such swap lines can reduce the need for reserve accumulation. The evidence suggeststhat there is only a limited scope for swaps to substitute for reserves. The selectivity of the swaplines indicates that only countries with significant trade and financial linkages can expect accessto such ad hoc arrangements, on a case by case basis. Moral hazard concerns suggest that theapplicability of these arrangements will remain limited. However, deepening swap agreementsand regional reserve pooling arrangements may weaken the precautionary motive for reserveaccumulation.

The empirical “gravity” equation is extremely successful in explaining bilateral trade. This paper shows how a multi-country model of specialization and costly trade (i.e. a microfounded gravity model) can be applied to explain empirical exchange rate puzzles. One such puzzle is the fact that nominal exchange rates are enormously volatile, but that this volatility does not appear to affect inflation. The gravity model is very successful in explaining this puzzle. In a sample of 25 OECD countries in the post- Bretton Woods period, the gravity prediction of inflation substantially outperforms the purchasing power parity prediction. The gravity prediction matches the volatility of actual inflation, and tracks its path closely. The superior performance of the gravity prediction is explained primarily by the fact that it takes account of the interaction of specialization with home bias. The stability of inflation in very open economies is explained in addition by the fact that the size of bilateral trade is negatively correlated with bilateral exchange rate volatility.

We examine the composition of bilateral trade between the United States and eight Asian Pacific economies from 1962 to 1992. Two complementary time series analyses of individual commodities at the SITC four-digit level indicate that significant changes occurred in trade composition during this period. We use a measure of normalized trade balances, developed by Gagnon and Rose (1995). For the eight bilateral trade relationships, commodities representing from fifty to seventy percent of 1992 dollar trade have shown statistically significant changes in the magnitude and, in some cases, in the direction of normalized trade balances, over the thirty-year period. Results support the conclusion that changes in trade patterns in both low-tech industries, such as textiles and clothing, and more high-tech industries, such as electronic parts and electronic goods, were important in the development of the East Asian economies.