Knowledge that Transforms

Bela Balassa's Theory of Economic Integration, published fifty years ago, is a remarkable, yet little known book. This essay reviews developments in the economic literature and in the process of European integration since the book's publication, showing that it was incredibly prescient. It anticipated by more than twenty years the modern literature on economic integration that emphasizes scale economies, imperfect competition, and economic geography. It also predicted that monetary union cannot function properly without political unification, a condition well illustrated by the recent euro-debt crisis that is likely to be a watershed in the history of European integration. (JEL B31, F15, F36, G01)

The experiences of the financial crises in the United States recently and in Japan in the 1990s suggest two lessons for future financial regulations. First, the lack of an orderly resolution mechanism for large and complex financial institutions created serious problems. Second, it is important to distinguish between individual financial institutions' health and stability of the whole financial system. Policy recommendations in the Squam Lake Report address these issues well. The Dodd–Frank Act could provide an effective regulatory framework to implement these recommendations, but the success depends on the details of the regulations that have not been specified. (JEL E44, E52, G01, G21, G28, L51)

An empirical review of the three fiscal stimulus packages of the 2000s shows that they had little if any direct impact on consumption or government purchases. Households largely saved the transfers and tax rebates. The federal government only increased purchases by a small amount. State and local governments saved their stimulus grants and shifted spending away from purchases to transfers. Counterfactual simulations show that the stimulus-induced decrease in state and local government purchases was larger than the increase in federal purchases. Simulations also show that a larger stimulus package with the same design as the 2009 stimulus would not have increased government purchases or consumption by a larger amount. These results raise doubts about the efficacy of such packages adding weight to similar assessments reached more than thirty years ago. (JEL E21, E23, E32, E62, H50)

This paper provides a selective survey of the incidence, causes, and consequences of a country's choice of its exchange rate regime. I begin with a critical review of Michael Klein and Jay C. Shambaugh's (2010) book Exchange Rate Regimes in the Modern Era, and then proceed to provide an alternative overview of what the economics profession knows and needs to know about exchange rate regimes. While a fixed exchange rate with capital mobility is a well-defined monetary regime, floating is not; thus, it is unclear whether it is theoretically sensible to compare countries across exchange rate regimes. This comparison is quite difficult to make empirically. It is often hard to figure out what the exchange rate regime of a country is in practice, since there are multiple conflicting regime classifications. More importantly, similar countries choose radically different exchange rate regimes without substantive consequences for macroeconomic outcomes like output growth and inflation. That is, the profession knows surprisingly little about either the causes or consequences of national choices of exchange rate regimes. But since the consequences of these choices are small, understanding their causes is of only academic interest. (JEL E52, F33)

We do not have a good measure of the effects of fiscal policy in a recession because the methods that we use to estimate the effects of fiscal policy—both those using the observed outcomes following different policies in aggregate data and those studying counterfactuals in fitted model economies—almost entirely ignore the state of the economy and estimate “the” government multiplier, which is presumably a weighted average of the one we care about—the multiplier in a recession—and one we care less about—the multiplier in an expansion. Notable exceptions to this general claim suggest this difference is potentially large. Our lack of knowledge stems significantly from the focus on linear dynamics: vector autoregressions and linearized (or close-to-linear) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Our lack of knowledge also reflects a lack of data: deep recessions are few and nonlinearities hard to measure. The lack of statistical power in the estimation of nonlinear models using aggregate data can be addressed by exploiting estimates of partial-equilibrium responses in disaggregated data. Microeconomic estimates of the partial-equilibrium causal effects of a policy can discipline the causal channels inherent in any DSGE model of the general equilibrium effects of policy. Microeconomic studies can also provide measures of the dependence of the effects of a policy on the states of different agents, which is a key component of the dependence of the general-equilibrium effects of fiscal policy on the state of the economy. (JEL E12, E13, E32, E62, H50)

Measurement errors in economic data are pervasive and nontrivial in size. The presence of measurement errors causes biased and inconsistent parameter estimates and leads to erroneous conclusions to various degrees in economic analysis. While linear errors-in-variables models are usually handled with well-known instrumental variable methods, this article provides an overview of recent research papers that derive estimation methods that provide consistent estimates for nonlinear models with measurement errors. We review models with both classical and nonclassical measurement errors, and with misclassification of discrete variables. For each of the methods surveyed, we describe the key ideas for identification and estimation, and discuss its application whenever it is currently available. (JEL C20, C26, C50)

India's growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity. Unlike the East Asian countries, India's growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufacturing exports. So what triggered the change in the growth trajectory? Did the market liberalization policies of the 1990s help? How have the initial conditions shaped the process? And how has the “Indian model” impinged on India's central problem of mass poverty? This paper surveys the literature and offers its own assessment of the drivers of change. (JEL I32, O13, O14, O15, O21, O47)

The recent crisis was characterized by massive illiquidity. This paper reviews what we know and don't know about illiquidity and all its friends: market freezes, fire sales, contagion, and ultimately insolvencies and bailouts. It first explains why liquidity cannot easily be apprehended through a single statistic, and asks whether liquidity should be regulated given that a capital adequacy requirement is already in place. The paper then analyzes market breakdowns due to either adverse selection or shortages of financial muscle, and explains why such breakdowns are endogenous to balance sheet choices and to information acquisition. It then looks at what economics can contribute to the debate on systemic risk and its containment. Finally, the paper takes a macroeconomic perspective, discusses shortages of aggregate liquidity, and analyzes how market value accounting and capital adequacy should react to asset prices. It concludes with a topical form of liquidity provision, monetary bailouts and recapitalizations, and analyzes optimal combinations thereof; it stresses the need for macro-prudential policies. (JEL E44, G01, G21, G28, G32, L51)

The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many as eight children each, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes was positive. Today, many women have no children at all, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes is zero or even negative. This paper discusses the large literature on the historical fertility transition, focusing on what we do and do not know about the process. I stress some possible misunderstandings of the demographic literature, and discuss an agenda for future work. (JEL I12, J13, N30)

In the past ten years, researchers have explored the impact of data revisions in many different contexts. Researchers have examined the properties of data revisions, how structural modeling is affected by data revisions, how data revisions affect forecasting, the impact of data revisions on monetary policy analysis, and the use of real-time data in current analysis. This paper summarizes many of the questions for which real-time data analysis has provided answers. In addition, researchers and institutions have developed better real-time data sets around the world. Still, additional research is needed in key areas and research to date has uncovered even more fruitful areas worth exploring. (JEL C52, C53, C80, E01)