Rui Esteves, Seán Kenny, Jason Lennard 20 July 2021
There is little consensus on the macroeconomic impacts of sovereign debt crises, despite the regularity of such events. This column quantifies the aggregate costs of defaults using a narrative approach on a large panel of 50 sovereigns between 1870 and 2010. It estimates significant and persistent negative effects of debt crises starting at 1.6% of GDP and peaking at 3.3%, before reverting to trend five years later. In addition, underlying causes matter. Defaults driven by aggregate demand shocks result in short-term contractions, whereas aggregate supply shocks lead to larger, more persistent losses.
Nicola Gennaioli, Alberto Martin, Stefano Rossi
The rise in income inequality and, more prominently, in the wage gap between men and women has been one of the major concerns among policymakers and the public in recent years. This column presents new evidence from Germany on the impact of exports on the gender wage gap which shows that an increase in a plant’s exports significantly reduces the wage gap between male and
Robert Johnson, Guillermo Noguera
The global engagement of a firm could range from none at all, to exporting and importing only, to exporting, importing and engaging in foreign direct investment. Research has shown that, for firms located in the US, the most globally engaged firms dominate both trade and investment. Bernard et al. (2009) find that multinational enterprises (MNEs) accounted for roughly 90% of US exports and imports of goods in 1993 and 2000. Bruner and Grimm (2019) find that MNEs accounted for roughly 90% of US exports and imports of selected services in 2011–2017. The dominance of MNEs in both trade and investment suggests that most international trade is associated with their global value chains (GVCs) and that the traditional notion of exports and imports representing transactions between producers and final consumers is in need of an update.
The creation of new preferential trade agreements remains a key driver in trade liberalisation, at least bilaterally. This column examines the creation of new agreements, highlighting the effects of pre-agreement bilateral imbalance and within-country income inequality on the likelihood of a preferential trade agreement being formed. The authors suggest that while the creation
Fiscal rules were enshrined in the founding documents of the European Monetary Union. This column presents the latest CfM-CEPR survey, in which the panel of experts on the European economy were nearly unanimous in agreeing that the existing EU fiscal rules require revision. Most panel members would opt for some combination of fiscal councils; more flexible, countercyclical, or