Cost Shocks Research Articles

Instrument-free identification and estimation of differentiated products models using cost data

We propose a new methodology for identifying and estimating demand in differentiated products models when demand and cost data are available. The method deals with the endogeneity of prices to demand shocks and the endogeneity of outputs to cost shocks by using cost data rather than instruments. Further, we allow for unobserved market size. Using Monte Carlo experiments, we show that our method works well in contexts where commonly used instruments are invalid. We also apply our method to the estimation of deposit demand in the US banking industry.

How Retail Gasoline Price Responds to Cost Shocks: Evidence from Daily Data of Stations in Seoul Korea

How Retail Gasoline Price Responds to Cost Shocks: Evidence from Daily Data of Stations in Seoul Korea

Analysing Construction Cost Shocks with a High-Resolution Housing Market Agent-Based Model

Analysing Construction Cost Shocks with a High-Resolution Housing Market Agent-Based Model

How do Gasoline Prices Respond to a Cost Shock ?

How do Gasoline Prices Respond to a Cost Shock ?

The cost shock, margin gap and enterprise financialization: An exogenous shock based on minimum wage

ABSTRACT This study examines the exogenous institutional impact of minimum wage policy on enterprise financialization in China. Empirical results show that an increased minimum wage significantly promotes the financialization of real enterprises. Moreover, the impact is more pronounced in enterprises characterised by a more significant profit margin gap between tangible and financial assets and higher degrees of labour-intensiveness. Further tests reveal that the promotional effect of the minimum wage on the financialization of labour-intensive enterprises tends to be more substantial under the following circumstances: (i) a smaller gap exists between an enterprise’s average wage and the local minimum wage; (ii) an enterprise finds it more challenging to pass on costs to the market; (iii) following the implementation of the Labour Contract Law. Further investigation indicates that raising the minimum wage exacerbates the adverse effects of enterprise financialization on corporate value.

The Extensive Margin of Exporting Products: A Firm-Level Analysis

To quantify trade frictions, we examine multiproduct exporters. We build a flexible general-equilibrium model and estimate market entry costs using Brazilian firm-product-destination data under rich demand and market access cost shocks. Our estimates show that additional products farther from a firm’s core competency come at higher production costs, but there are substantive economies of scope in market access costs. Market access costs differ across destinations, falling more rapidly in scope at nearby regions and at destinations with fewer nontariff barriers. We evaluate a counterfactual scenario that harmonizes market access costs across destinations and find global welfare gains similar to eliminating all current tariffs. (JEL D22, F12, F13, F14, O14, O19)

Entry costs and aggregate dynamics

We use a structural model to study the interaction between barriers-to-entry, investment, and monetary policy. We first show that entry cost shocks have distinct macroeconomic implications: they raise markups but reduce aggregate demand and investment in such a way that inflation barely changes. Entry costs can thus rationalize the coexistence of increasing markups and low inflation. We then estimate the model on U.S. data. We find that entry costs have risen in the U.S. over the past 20 years and have depressed capital and consumption by about 4%. Absent entry cost shocks, the real interest rate would have been between 0.5 to 1 percentage point higher over the lower bound period.

Multinational Firms’ Sourcing Decisions and Wage Inequality: A Dynamic Analysis

This paper uses a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model to consider how, following a trade cost shock, multinational firms’ offshoring decision and the countries’ different factor endowments affect wage inequality between high- and low-skilled workers in the home country. Highlighting task-offshoring, heterogenous firms, and factor proportions, the study sheds light on how offshoring shapes wage inequality along different time horizons. While the paper’s focus is the relationship between the U.S. (home country) and China (foreign country), its findings are more broadly relevant. The three main findings are these: First, both intensive and extensive margins contribute to the widening wage gap, with the latter playing a more important role in the short- to medium- term than it does in the initial stage after the trade cost shock. Second, endogenous firm entry raises wage for both low-skilled and high-skilled workers while also widening the wage gap between the two groups over time. Third, whether firms offshore to a foreign country like Mexico, where the supply of low-skilled laborers is moderately larger than in the home country, or to a country like China, where the supply of low-skilled laborers is vastly larger, makes scant difference to wage inequality in the long term.

The dynamics of the U.S. trade balance and real exchange rate: The J curve and trade costs?

We study how changes in trade barriers contributed to the dynamics of the US trade balance and real exchange rate between 1980 and 2015 - a period when trade tripled. Using two dynamic trade models, we decompose fluctuations in the trade balance into terms related to trade integration (global and unilateral) and business cycle asymmetries. We find three main results. First, the relatively large US trade deficits as a share of GDP in the 2000s compared to the 1980s mostly reflect a rise in the trade share of GDP. Second, controlling for trade, only about 60% of net trade flows are due to business cycle asymmetries. And third, about two-thirds of the contribution of business-cycle asymmetries are a lagged response. For instance, the short-run Armington elasticity is about 0.2 while the long-run is closer to 1.12 with only 6.9% of the gap closed per quarter. We show that a two-country IRBC model with a dynamic exporting decision, pricing-to-market, and trade cost shocks can account for the dynamics of the US trade balance, real exchange rate, and trade integration. The model clarifies how permanent and transitory changes in trade barriers affect the trade balance and how to identify changes in trade barriers. It shows that uneven trade policy shocks substantially bias Armington elasticity estimates downward. We also show the effect of temporary trade policies on the trade balance depends on whether they induce a trade war.

Uncertainty and the Shadow Banking Crisis: Estimates from a Dynamic Model

Shadow banks play an important role in the modern financial system and are arguably the source of key vulnerabilities that led to the 2007–2009 financial crisis. I develop a quantitative framework with uncertainty fluctuations and endogenous bank default to study the dynamics of shadow banking. I argue that the increase in asset return uncertainty during the crisis results in a spread spike, making it more costly for shadow banks to roll over their debt in the short-term debt market. As a result, these financial institutions are forced to deleverage, leading to a decrease in credit intermediation. The model is estimated using a bank-level data set of shadow banks in the United States. The parameter estimates imply that uncertainty shocks can explain 72% of asset contraction and 70% of deleveraging in the shadow banking sector. Maturity mismatch and asset fire-sales amplify the impact of the uncertainty shocks. First-moment shocks to bank asset return, financial shocks, or fire-sale cost shocks alone cannot reproduce the large interbank spread spike, dramatic deleveraging, or contraction in the U.S. shadow banking sector during the crisis. The model also allows for policy experiments. I analyze how unconventional monetary policies can help to counter the rise in the interbank spread, thus stabilizing the credit supply. Taking bank moral hazard into consideration, I find that government bailout might be counterproductive as it might result in more aggressive risk-taking among shadow banks, especially when bailout decisions are based on bank characteristics. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.

Strategic behaviors and transfer of wholesale costs to retail prices in the electricity market: Evidence from Colombia

This paper estimates the pass-through of prices from wholesale to retail using monthly data for the period January 2017–March 2020 for residential users in the Colombian electricity market, which is characterized by large hydroelectric capacity and inelastic demand. Although much of the literature has found the pass-through rate to be incomplete, results are consistent with other studies that have been conducted for electricity markets and have shown that firms have no incentive to adjust their profit margins in the face of a cost shock. These results also converge with the regulatory framework of the retail electricity market in Colombia. In particular, the results reveal that the cost pass-through is more than complete with a rate of 115%. There is also evidence of an increase in the magnitude of the cost pass-through year by year. When analyzed by type of retailer, the results suggest that the cost pass-through of two major dominant and vertically integrated retailers is statistically higher than the remaining retailers with a pass-through close to 120%, suggesting that dominant retailers integrated with power generation could exercise market power.

The Public‐Sector Cost of Capital: An Empirical Test of Peltzman’s Conjecture*

AbstractI test whether public‐sector ownership reduces conventional measures of market risk by using an event exogenous to the air transportation sector. I find that government‐sponsored enterprises show lower price volatility than non‐government‐sponsored enterprises, arguably due to the government’s ability to buffer government‐sponsored enterprises against demand and cost shocks. The upshot for jurisdictions with fiscal space is that cash flows under public‐sector provision should be discounted at a lower rate than cash flows under private‐sector provision.

Asymmetric Cost Pass‐Through in Multi‐Unit Procurement Auctions: An Experimental Approach*

We explore input cost pass‐through in multi‐unit procurement auctions. Whether cost shocks are private versus common across firms has important implications for discriminatory, but not uniform price auctions. We provide evidence of asymmetric pass‐through of private cost shocks in discriminatory auctions. Unlike uniform price auctions, revenue‐maximizing bidders in discriminatory auctions ‘pad’ bids close to the expected clearing price for units with costs below that price, but they do not bid below cost on higher cost units. Therefore, if costs are higher than expected, the clearing price rises and if costs are lower than expected, the clearing price remains high.

Using Brexit to identify the nature of price rigidities

Using price quote data that underpin the official U.K. consumer price index (CPI), we analyze the effects of the unexpected passing of the Brexit referendum on the dynamics of price adjustments. The sizable depreciation of the British pound that immediately followed Brexit works as a quasi-experiment, enabling us to study the transmission of a large common marginal cost shock to inflation as well as the distribution of prices within granular product categories. The bulk of the aggregate inflationary effect is attributable to the size of price adjustments, an aspect matched well by the time-dependent price-setting model. The state-dependent model fares better in capturing the endogenous selection of price changes at the lower end of the price distribution. Both models miss on the magnitude of the adjustment conditional on selection.

The Determinants of Price Change: Evidence from a Survey of Firms

Price stability are important for macroeconomic stability, especially for the economies, which are facing macroeconomic instability. Contractionary monetary policy can play an important role in minimizing the frequency of price change, so for effective monetary policy, it is necessary to identify the determinants of price setting behaviour. The objective of the study is to determine the patterns of price setting of firms and responses of firms to economic shocks, i.e. changes in demand and supply side factors, the role of firm characteristics, institutional and other factors in determining the channel of adjustment after these shocks. The data is collected through stratified frandom samplling from 342 firms, located in four Industrial estates of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Price setting behavior is measured through importance of demand and cost shocks for price change. To estimate the effects of determinants of price change, models are estimated through logistic technique. Firms’ likelihood of price increases higher than that to price decrease in response to both demand and supply shocks. Furthermore, supply-side factors lead to higher frequency of price change than demand-side factors do. The cost of raw material and cost of energy are the most important causes of price change, both for the price increase and decrease. Demand and cost shocks are important determinants of price change for imperfectly competitive firms, backward-looking firms, firms run by managers having more information about economic conditions, while credibility of central bank is important determinant of price change in case of demand shocks only. Size of firms and information set regarding expected inflation do not have any effect. For effective monetary policy of Pakistan, credibility of central bank has to be established to stabilize prices and pre-emptive measures should be taken on the part of central bank to counter supply shocks.

Competition and Entry in Agricultural Markets: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

African agricultural markets are characterized by low farmer revenues and high consumer food prices. Many have worried that this wedge is partially driven by imperfect competition among intermediaries. This paper provides experimental evidence from Kenya on intermediary market structure. Randomized cost shocks and demand subsidies are used to identify a structural model of market competition. Estimates reveal that traders act consistently with joint profit maximization and earn median markups of 39 percent. Exogenously induced firm entry has negligible effects on prices, and low take-up of subsidized entry offers implies large fixed costs. We estimate that traders capture 82 percent of total surplus. (JEL L13, O13, Q11, Q12, Q13)

Financial Crises and Labor Market Recoveries: A Bayesian Evaluation

Average hours worked in the US recovers much faster than the unemployment rate following financial crises. Using an identified vector autoregression framework with nine quarterly US time series from 1984 to 2014, I find that an adverse financial shock leads to a fall in economic activity with a persistent increase in the unemployment rate but a transitory decrease in average hours worked. I then embed labor market frictions and financial frictions into a New Keynesian model to explain this stylized fact. The model introduces a relatively new financial shock the default cost shock, which captures the financial market’s inefficiency. I estimate the model using Bayesian methods and find that the default cost shock explains a significant portion of the variations in aggregate variables. In particular, this shock accounts for the business cycle features of a financial crisis better than the other relevant shocks do.

ON PRICE DYNAMICS WITH SEARCH AND BARGAINING IN THE PRODUCT MARKET

We introduce business-to-business (B2B) relationships into an otherwise standard model to revisit two aspects of price dynamics in a unified analysis. On one side, the pass-through of cost shocks to prices is empirically incomplete. On the other side, the literature contains conjectures that long-term relationships may reduce the allocative role of price changes. After a partial equilibrium analysis of these aspects, we consider the general equilibrium effects. The formation of B2B relationships implies that the trade of intermediate goods depends on search, bargaining, and the adjustment along the intensive margin as opposed to the extensive margin. We find that, when this adjustment is costly, retailers have a relatively high bargaining power, and mismatch shocks are possible, the model can account for the second moments of the US producer price index and other variables. In this case, although its allocative role is low, the intermediate goods price affects the allocation of goods through the search externalities and is sufficiently volatile. The analysis includes several sensitivity tests and comparisons.

Charge-offs, Defaults and the Financial Accelerator

We uncover new facts: U.S. banks countercyclically vary the ratio of charge-offs to defaulted loans (COD). The variance of this ratio is roughly 15 times larger than that of GDP. Canonical financial accelerator models cannot explain this variance. We develop an expression for the wedge between charge-offs and defaults in the model and show that introducing stochastic default costs as in Gunn and Johri (2013a) and stochastic risk as in Christiano et al. (2014) into the canonical theoretical model can potentially resolve the discrepancy since both shocks have the ability to move this wedge. Estimating the augmented model using Bayesian techniques reveals that default cost shocks account for most of the variance of COD, while risk shocks account for most of the credit spread. Both shocks also matter for standard U.S. business cycle variables, with the anticipated components of each being most important.

Land costs, government intervention, and migration of firms: The case of China

By using unique firm relocation data in China, we first document the relocation behavior of Chinese firms and show that less government intervention (relative to market forces) can improve economic efficiency by facilitating industrial relocation which saves on costs. Ever since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, investments have poured into the coastal region, which in turn, have almost tripled land costs in the major coastal cities. We exploit this land cost shock in the early 2000s to identify its effect on the relocation behavior of firms. Specifically, we instrument land price growth with the access of a city to foreign markets (approximated by distance to Shanghai), and then estimate the differential impact of land costs on firms regarding land reliance. Our major findings are as follows: (1) the migration rate of Chinese firms in China is on average 3.2%, (2) Rising land costs drive firms to migrate, and firms that use more land-intensive technology are more compelled to migrate, and (3) in regions where the local government intervention is stronger (the market is less developed), the relocation decision of Chinese firms is distorted in the sense that firms are less likely to relocate despite surging land prices due to government intervention.