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Mobile Internet, Collateral, and Banking
Combining administrative data on credit, internet penetration and a land reform in Rwanda, this paper shows that the complementarity between technology and law can overcome financial frictions. Leveraging quasi-experimental variation in 3G availability from lightning strikes and incidental coverage, we show that mobile connectivity steers borrowers from microfinance to commercial banks and improves loan terms. These effects are partly due to the role of 3G internet in facilitating the acquisition of land titles from the reform, used as a collateral for bank loans and mortgages. We quantify that the collateral's availability mediates 35% of the overall effect of mobile internet on credit and 80% for collateralized loans.
Local Content Requirements
In the wake of the Great Recession of 2008–09, economists feared that protectionist policies might sweep the world economy, echoing the wave of tariff escalations during the Great Depression of the 1930s. To some surprise, officials were more restrained and largely avoided traditional forms of protection (tariffs and quotas), leading some observers to underestimate the incidence of new protectionism. In fact, policymakers increasingly turned to more opaque behind-the-border nontariff barriers (NTBs). Using a combination of statistical analysis and case studies, the authors show that local content requirements (LCRs), a form of NTB, have become increasingly popular. How much was global trade actually reduced on account of LCRs? A conservative estimate might be $93 billion. Case studies featured cover the healthcare sector in Brazil, wind turbines in Canada, the automobile industry in China, solar cells and modules in India, oil and gas in Nigeria, and “Buy American” restrictions on government procurement in the United States.
The Anatomy of Banks’ IT Investments: Drivers and Implications
This paper relies on administrative data to study determinants and implications of US banks’ Information Technology (IT) investments, which have increased six-fold over two decades. Large and small banks had similar IT expenses a decade ago. Since then, large banks sharply increased their spending, especially those which were more exposed to competition from fintech lenders. Other local-level and bank-level factors, such as county income and bank income sources, also contribute to explain the heterogeneity in IT investments. Analysis of the mortgage market reveals that fintechs’ lending behavior is more similar to that of non-bank financial intermediaries rather than IT-savvy banks, suggesting that factors other than technology are responsible for the differences between banks and other lenders. However, both IT-savvy banks and fintech lend to lower income borrowers, pointing towards benefits for financial inclusion from higher IT adoption. Banks’ IT investments are also shown to matter for the responsiveness of bank lending to monetary policy.
Unraveling the Wage-Output Disconnect: The Role of Labor Market Power
In this paper, we theoretically and empirically explore the role of firm labor market power in the wage-output relationship. We start by laying out a theoretical model with imperfect labor mobility between firms and sectors, which implies upward-sloping labor supply curves that firms face, allowing firms to have labor market power (i.e., wage markdown). Assuming firm heterogeneity under oligopsony, markdowns can be represented as a function of firm labor market share. The model implies that firms with higher labor market share, indicated by a higher payroll share in their respective sectors, exhibit a weaker relationship between the changes in wages and output. We test the model’s predicti...
Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War
The war in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray began in November 2020. It inflicted more casualties than any other contemporary conflict in the world. It has also been among the least understood. The fighting and accompanying blockade led to an estimated 600,000 deaths – more than the number who died in the 1984-5 famine. International journalists were banned as the region was sealed off from the outside world by Ethiopian and Eritrean governments prosecuting a strategy designed to crush Tigray at almost any cost. Hatred of Tigrayans was stoked by senior advisers to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed: they have called Tigrayans ‘weeds’ who must be uprooted, their place in histo...
Efficiency-Adjusted Public Capital and Growth
This paper constructs an efficiency-adjusted public capital stock series and re-examines the public capital and growth relationship for 52 developing countries. The results show that public capital is a significant contributor to economic growth. Although the estimated coefficient for the income share of public capital is larger in middle- than in low-income countries, the opposite is true for the marginal product of public capital. The quality of public investment, as measured by variables capturing the adequacy of project selection and implementation, are statistically significant in explaining variations in economic growth, a result mainly driven by low-income countries.
Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond
With contributions from 22 scholars and empirical material from 29 countries within and beyond Latin America, this book identifies subtypes of populism to further understand right-wing populist movements, parties, leaders, and governments. It seeks to examine whether the term populism continues to have any validity and what relationship(s) it has to democracy. Part 1 is an exploration of populism as an analytical concept. It asks how populism can and should be defined; whether populism can be broken down into subtypes; and whether the use of the term within and beyond Latin America in recent scholarship has been consistent. Part 2 focuses on political economy, and specifically whether politi...
Exporting Capitalism
The US government has long sought investment opportunities for US companies in developing countries. But the results have been mixed: firms have preferred to invest in the industrial world and developing-world leaders have not always welcomed foreign investment. Violence and the presence of natural resources have also hindered foreign development.
The Prudential Carve-Out for Financial Services
Studies the GATS prudential carve-out as well as prudential carve-outs in preferential trade agreements.
The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice
The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the...
