Knowledge that Transforms

We develop a tractable small‐open‐economy framework to characterize the constrained efficient use of the monetary policy rate, foreign exchange (FX) intervention, capital controls, and domestic macroprudential measures. The model features dominant currency pricing, positive premia on local currency debt arising from financiers' portfolio constraints, and occasionally‐binding external and domestic borrowing constraints. We characterize the conditions under which the traditional prescription—relying solely on the policy rate and exchange rate flexibility—remains sufficient, even in the presence of externalities. By contrast, to manage noise trader flows into and out of the local currency debt market, FX intervention and in some cases capital inflow taxes should be used instead of the traditional prescription. Moreover, if a country faces a mix of local currency premia and external borrowing constraints, we establish that certain regulations to limit FX mismatch may alleviate the external borrowing constraint but exacerbate the local currency premia. Finally, we show that capital controls may dominate domestic macroprudential measures in cases when external shocks trigger stress in domestic housing markets.

A principal can restrict an agent's information (the persuasion problem) or discretion (the delegation problem). We study these two problems under standard single‐crossing assumptions on the agent's marginal utility. We show that these problems are equivalent on the set of monotone stochastic mechanisms, implying, in particular, the equivalence of deterministic delegation and monotone partitional persuasion. We also show that the monotonicity restriction is superfluous for linear persuasion and linear delegation, implying their equivalence on the set of all stochastic mechanisms. Finally, using tools from the persuasion literature, we characterize optimal delegation mechanisms, thereby generalizing and extending existing results in the delegation literature.

I study whether platform competition in app‐based transportation generates waste and whether consolidating competing networks would improve efficiency. I build a spatial model of a ride‐hailing market where competing platforms set prices strategically and estimate it using detailed data from two major platforms in New York City. Comparing the status quo to simulated counterfactuals, I find that: (i) platform market power and the fragmentation of users across networks cause a $176 million annual loss in social welfare and waste 21% of driver‐generated traffic; (ii) a platform merger would trade off gains from pooling all users into a single network against harms from greater market power, reducing traffic by 8% but lowering consumer surplus by $77 million per year due to a 4% price hike; and (iii) interoperability regulations would bring these gains without undermining competition, reducing wasteful traffic by 6% while raising consumer surplus by $63 million per year.

Does access to free health insurance affect household labor supply decisions? We address this question by exploiting the 2002 introduction of universal health insurance in Mexico (Seguro Popular, SP) that broke the link between access to health care and job contract. Reducedform estimates show that SP increased informality among less educated families with children by 3.5%. We develop and estimate a household search model that incorporates the value of formal sector amenities relative to pre-reform alternatives, and the value of health insurance. Model estimates show that households value SP by, at most, 1.33 per unit of net cost.

International audience