Upcoming Presentations

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of intangible capital on firms' offshoring decisions, aggregate productivity, and external competitiveness. I develop a two-country offshoring model with endogenous intangible investment that captures its unique scalability in a framework featuring heterogeneous firm entry and exit. We find that the introduction of intangible capital successfully accounts for the post-GFC U.S. data, characterized by productivity improvement and real exchange rate appreciation. This occurs as productivity shocks induce domestic firm entry, which lowers average productivity and raises domestic prices, thereby intensifying the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect. Incorporating intangibles yields substantially larger aggregate productivity gains than non-intangible models by enhancing resource allocation. This research contributes by endogenously modeling the scalability of intangible capital, a previously understudied factor in offshoring models.

Abstract: This paper documents a novel cognitive source of disagreement: heterogeneous recall of past experiences due to context-dependent memory contributes to divergence in household beliefs. The intuition is illustrated through a stylized model à la Wachter and Kahana (2024). Empirically, using local weather as contextual cues, I construct a measure of memory-based disagreement in U.S. households’ inflation expectations and show that it explains survey-based disagreement across forecast horizons, with stronger effects when disagreement is driven by unusual contexts. The findings align with established memory regularities, generalize to households in other countries, and remain robust across alternative specifications. I further show that heightened disagreement arising from heterogeneous memory weakens monetary policy transmission. These results highlight a previously overlooked cognitive friction shaping disagreement in households’ expectations.

Abstract: This study examines how maturity mismatches in banks’ balance sheets shape the transmission of monetary policy to credit supply. Linking supervisory data on approximately 1,800 euro area banks to loan-level credit records, we show that the role of maturity mismatches is highly ‘shock-specific’, settling a long-standing debate in the literature. Mismatches amplify the effects of unconventional but not conventional monetary policies. Banks with larger maturity gaps reduce lending more sharply following monetary policy surprises regarding quantitative tightening (QT) because valuation losses on long-term assets negatively affect their net worth, causing tighter leverage constraints. A New Keynesian DSGE model with endogenous maturity choices explains this asymmetry: banks with high maturity mismatches are more exposed to long-duration losses that compress net worth and amplify real effects. In contrast, standard policy rate shocks, which mainly affect short-term rates, generate little heterogeneity in lending responses.

Abstract: We study how tasks, formality, and sectoral reallocation jointly shaped workforce adjustment in Colombia’s urban labor market from 1984 to 2019. Using harmonized task groups mapped from CNO-70, a long imputed informality series consistent with DANE benchmarks, and within between decompositions, we document a robust hollowing out of routine work. Between 1995 and 2019, the routine share falls by about 8.6 percentage points, while manual and abstract shares rise by roughly 3.9 and 4.7 points, and close to four fifths of the routine decline reflects within industry substitution rather than shifts across industries. Adjustment is disproportionately absorbed by the formal sector, whose share increases from 55.6 percent to 63.8 percent, alongside a formal sector tilt toward high skill services. We then show that macro shocks can amplify task reallocation. Reduced form city level estimates indicate that commodity boom forces associated with Dutch Disease, in particular real exchange rate appreciation and oil rent intensity, are linked to larger increases in polarization in cities that were initially more routine intensive, with effects concentrated during the 2003 to 2014 boom window. Wages do not sustain a stable U shape; instead, wage growth rotates across decades, and residual wages point to a rising abstract premium and a late improvement of manual relative to routine. Overall, the evidence is consistent with technological adjustment within industries interacting with boom driven relative price movements that shift employment away from routine intensive tradables toward service activities combining abstract and manual tasks.