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Annual Review of Economics - Volume 14, 2022
Volume 14, 2022
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Enough Potential Repudiation: Economic and Legal Aspects of Sovereign Debt in the Pandemic Era
Anna Gelpern, and Ugo PanizzaVol. 14 (2022), pp. 545–570More LessThis article reviews recent economic and legal literature on sovereign debt in light of the COVID-19 shock. Most of the core theoretical contributions across the two disciplines hinge on immunity, and the sovereign borrower's consequent inability to commit to repay foreign creditors, as the distinguishing attribute of sovereignty. We highlight a persistent gap between sovereign debt theories grounded in immunity and empirical evidence that the governments of low- and middle-income countries borrow far more than theory would predict. On the other hand, the governments of advanced economies, generally viewed as outside the scope of this literature before the euro area debt crisis, have shown themselves to be far more commitment challenged than previously supposed. We conclude that the traditional split between a literature concerned with developing economy sovereigns that repudiate debt and one concerned with advanced economies that do not is no longer appropriate (if ever it was). We argue that shifting some attention away from immunity to a different attribute of sovereignty—authority—could help bridge the gap between the two literatures.
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The Great Gatsby Curve
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 571–605More LessThis paper provides a synthesis of theoretical and empirical work on the Great Gatsby Curve, the positive empirical relationship between cross-sectional income inequality, and persistence of income across generations. We present statistical models of income dynamics that mechanically give rise to the relationship between inequality and mobility. Five distinct classes of theories are developed, including models on family investments, skills, social influences, political economy, and aspirations, each providing a behavioral mechanism to explain the relationship. Finally, we review empirical studies that provide evidence of the curve for a range of contexts and socioeconomic outcomes as well as explore evidence on mechanisms.
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Inequality and the COVID-19 Crisis in the United Kingdom
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 607–636More LessWe review the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on inequalities in education, the labor market, household living standards, mental health, and wealth in the United Kingdom. The pandemic has pushed up inequalities on several dimensions. School closures, in particular, disrupted the learning of poorer children, leading to lower attainment. Mental health worsened for those groups (women and younger adults) who had poorer mental health pre-pandemic. Lockdowns and social distancing particularly reduced the ability of younger, lower-earning, and less educated people to work. However, job-support programs combined with the expanded welfare system meant that, if anything, disposable income inequality fell. Rising house prices have benefited people around the middle of the wealth distribution. In the longer term, lower work experience and training for the less educated and missed schooling—particularly among children from more deprived families—could push up human capital inequalities and reduce social mobility.
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The Aftermath of Debt Surges
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 637–663More LessDebt in emerging markets and developing economies is at its highest level in half a century. In about 9 in 10 emerging markets and developing economies, debt is higher now than it was in 2010, and in half of the emerging markets and developing economies, debt is more than 30 percentage points of GDP higher than in 2010. This article reviews a menu of options that in the past have helped lower debt burdens. It examines orthodox options (enhancing growth, fiscal consolidation, privatization, and wealth taxation) and heterodox options (inflation, financial repression, and debt default and restructuring). The mix of feasible options depends on country characteristics and the type of debt. However, none of these options comes without political, economic, and social costs. The challenges associated with debt reduction raise questions of global governance, including to what extent advanced economies can better support emerging market and developing economies in cushioning prospective shocks.
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Networks and Economic Fragility
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 665–696More LessMany firms, banks, or other economic agents embedded in a network of codependencies may experience a contemporaneous, sharp drop in functionality or productivity following a shock—even if that shock is localized or moderate in magnitude. We offer an extended review of motivating evidence that such fragility is a live concern in supply networks and in financial systems. We then discuss network models of fragility, focusing on the forces that make aggregate functionality especially sensitive to the economic environment. The key structural features of networks that determine their fragility are reviewed, with an emphasis on the importance of phase transitions. We then turn to endogenous decisions, both by market participants (e.g., firms investing in network formation and robustness) and by planners (e.g., authorities undertaking macroprudential regulation). Fragility has some distinctive implications for such decisions.
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Central Bank Digital Currencies: Motives, Economic Implications, and the Research Frontier
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 697–721More LessIn just a few years, central banks have rapidly ramped up their research and development efforts on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). A growing body of economic research informs these activities, often focusing on the “reserves for all” aspect of CBDCs for retail use. However, CBDCs should be considered in the full context of the digital economy and the centrality of data, which raises concerns around competition, payment system integrity, and privacy. This review gives a guided tour of the growing CBDC literature on the microeconomic considerations related to operation architectures, technologies, and privacy as well as the macroeconomic implications for the financial system, financial stability, and monetary policy. A set of questions, particularly on the cross-border dimensions of CBDCs, remains unresolved and calls for further work to expand the research frontier.
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The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 723–745More LessThe adoption of barcode scanning technology in the 1970s gave rise to a new form of data: scanner data. Soon afterwards, researchers began using this new resource, and since then a large number of papers have exploited scanner data. The data provide detailed price, quantity, and product characteristic information for completely disaggregate products at high frequency, and they typically track a panel of stores and/or consumers. Their availability has led to advances, inter alia, in the study of consumer demand, the measurement of market power, firms’ strategic interactions and decision making, the evaluation of policy reforms, and the measurement of price dispersion and inflation. In this article we highlight some of the pros and cons of this data source, and we discuss some of the ways its availability to researchers has transformed the economics literature.
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The Marginal Propensity to Consume in Heterogeneous Agent Models
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 747–775More LessWhat model features and calibration strategies yield a large average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) in heterogeneous agent models? Through a systematic investigation of models with different preferences, dimensions of ex-ante heterogeneity, income processes, and asset structures, we show that the most important factor is the share and type of hand-to-mouth households. One-asset models either feature a trade-off between a high average MPC and a realistic level of aggregate wealth or generate an excessively polarized wealth distribution that vastly understates the wealth held by households in the middle of the distribution. Two-asset models that include both liquid and illiquid assets can resolve this tension with a large enough gap between liquid and illiquid returns. We discuss how such return differential can be justified from the perspective of theory and data.
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Experimental Economics: Past and Future
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 777–794More LessOver the past several decades, lab experiments have offered economists a rich source of evidence on incentivized behavior. In this article, we use detailed data on experimental papers to describe recent trends in the literature. We also discuss various experimentation platforms and new approaches to the design and analysis of the data they generate.
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Spatial Sorting and Inequality
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 795–819More LessThe spatial segregation of college-educated and non-college-educated workers between commuting zones in the United States has steadily grown since 1980. We summarize prior work on sorting and location and document new descriptive patterns on how sorting and locations have changed over the past four decades. We find that there has been a shift in the sorting of college-educated workers from cities centered primarily around production in 1980 to cities centered around consumption by 2017. We develop a spatial equilibrium model to understand these patterns and highlight key places where further research is needed. Our framework helps understand the causes and consequences of changes in spatial sorting; their impact on inequality; and how they respond to, and feed into, the changing nature of cities.
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Regression Discontinuity Designs
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 821–851More LessThe regression discontinuity (RD) design is one of the most widely used nonexperimental methods for causal inference and program evaluation. Over the last two decades, statistical and econometric methods for RD analysis have expanded and matured, and there is now a large number of methodological results for RD identification, estimation, inference, and validation. We offer a curated review of this methodological literature organized around the two most popular frameworks for the analysis and interpretation of RD designs: the continuity framework and the local randomization framework. For each framework, we discuss three main topics: (a) designs and parameters, focusing on different types of RD settings and treatment effects of interest; (b) estimation and inference, presenting the most popular methods based on local polynomial regression and methods for the analysis of experiments, as well as refinements, extensions, and alternatives; and (c) validation and falsification, summarizing an array of mostly empirical approaches to support the validity of RD designs in practice.
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Early Childhood Development, Human Capital, and Poverty
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 853–892More LessChildren's experiences during early childhood are critical for their cognitive and socioemotional development, two key dimensions of human capital. However, children from low-income backgrounds often grow up lacking stimulation and basic investments, which leads to developmental deficits that are difficult, if not impossible, to reverse later in life without intervention. The existence of these deficits is a key driver of inequality and contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty. In this article, we discuss the framework used in economics to model parental investments and early childhood development and use it as an organizing tool to review some of the empirical evidence on early childhood research. We then present results from various important early childhood interventions, with an emphasis on developing countries. Bringing these elements together, we draw conclusions on what we have learned and provide some directions for future research.
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The Econometric Model for Causal Policy Analysis
Vol. 14 (2022), pp. 893–923More LessThis article discusses the econometric model of causal policy analysis and two alternative frameworks that are popular in statistics and computer science. By employing the alternative frameworks uncritically, economists ignore the substantial advantages of an econometric approach, and this results in less informative analyses of economic policy. We show that the econometric approach to causality enables economists to characterize and analyze a wider range of policy problems than is allowed by alternative approaches.
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