Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2015)

In the current thesis I investigate the impact of sectoral structure of the economy on some aspects of its short-run fluctuations and long-run trends.

In the first chapter -- "Cost Structure and Price Rigidity across Sectors" -- I model a mechanism through which the structure of costs of producers can affect producers' decisions on the frequency of adjusting prices. First, I establish an empirical observation that sectors which are characterized by either a higher share of labor or more diversified structure of bundles of intermediate goods are characterized by more rigid prices. Then I build and solve a partial equilibrium model that describes optimal price-setting strategies of firms in different sectors. The model provides an explanation for heterogeneity in price rigidity across different sectors. The calibrated model can be used for predicting how changes in the production processes and in the structure of costs can affect the heterogeneity of price rigidity across sectors and, hence, the aggregate price rigidity in the economy.

In the second chapter -- "Technological Spillovers and Dynamics of Comparative Advantage" -- I investigate the question of the evolution of sector productivity and comparative advantage under the presence of cross-sector technological spillovers. For that I develop a dynamic model of international trade with cross-sector spillovers. In addition to the standard effect of comparative advantage on labor allocation, the model accounts for the effects of labor allocation on the sector productivity and comparative advantage. The core mechanism is a combination of an idea-generating process within each sector and technological spillovers across sectors. I establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a balanced growth path and describe the conditions under which a welfare-improving industrial policy is possible. I calibrate the model using the US patent data to parametrize the strength of technological spillovers and use the model to describe the optimal industrial policy.

    Cover page: Essays in Macroeconomics and Trade
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2018)
    Even with well-developed capital markets, there is no private market mechanism for trading between current and future generations. This generates a potential role for public old-age pension systems to spread economic and demographic shocks among different generations. This paper evaluates how different systems smooth and propagate shocks to productivity, fertility, mortality and migration in a realistic OLG model. We use reductions in the variance of wealth equivalents to measure performance, starting with the existing U.S. system as a unifying framework, in which we vary how much taxes and benefits adjust, and which we then compare to the existing German and Swedish systems. We find that system design and shock type are key factors. The German system and the benefit-adjustment-only U.S. system best smooth productivity shocks, which are by far the most important shocks. Overall, the German system performs best, while the Swedish system, which includes a buffer stock to relax annual budget constraints, performs rather poorly. Focusing on the U.S. system, reliance solely on tax adjustment fares best for mortality and migration shocks, while equal reliance on tax and benefit adjustments is best for fertility shocks.
      Cover page: Propagation and smoothing of shocks in alternative social security systems
      Top