FEBRUARY 23 2017

Lucia Quaglietti, BoE: Is economic uncertainty holding back growth in the euro-area? This blog discusses the impact of economic uncertainty on euro-area activity. To do that, we built on the methodology developed for the UK by Haddow et al. (2013). Our analysis suggests that elevated economic uncertainty has been an important driver of euro-area GDP during the financial and sovereign crisis, detracting (on average) around 0.5 pp from annual euro-area growth in the period between 2008Q3 and 2011Q3.  As the shock unwound, GDP was boosted during the subsequent recovery. This analysis suggests that any further increase in uncertainty could have a materially negative impact on euro-area activity. Therefore, it needs to be carefully monitored by policy makers, particularly in the context of the upcoming political elections in a number of countries.

Gauti B. Eggertsson, Neil R. Mehrotra, Jacob A. Robbins, NBER: A Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation. This paper formalizes and quantifies the secular stagnation hypothesis, defined as a persistently low or negative natural rate of interest leading to a chronically binding zero lower bound (ZLB). Output-inflation dynamics and policy prescriptions are fundamentally different than in the standard New Keynesian framework. Using a 56-period quantitative lifecycle model, a standard calibration to US data delivers a natural rate ranging from -1% to -2%, implying an elevated risk of ZLB episodes for the foreseeable future. We decompose the contribution of demographic and technological factors to the decline in interest rates since 1970 and quantify changes required to restore higher rates.

Italo Colantone, Piero Stanig, VOX: Globalisation and economic nationalism. The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to show that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese exports. Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected industries or not.

John Bound, Gaurav Khanna, Nicolas Morales, NBER: Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S. Over the 1990s, the share of foreigners entering the US high-skill workforce grew rapidly. This migration potentially had a significant effect on US workers, consumers and firms. To study these effects, we construct a general equilibrium model of the US economy and calibrate it using data from 1994 to 2001. Built into the model are positive effects high skilled immigrants have on innovation. Counterfactual simulations based on our model suggest that immigration increased the overall welfare of US natives, and had significant distributional consequences. In the absence of immigration, wages for US computer scientists would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher and employment in computer science for US workers would have been 6.1% to 10.8% higher in 2001. On the other hand, complements in production benefited substantially from immigration, and immigration also lowered prices and raised the output of IT goods by between 1.9% and 2.5%, thus benefiting consumers. Finally, firms in the IT sector also earned substantially higher profits due to immigration.

Eric A. Hanushek et al, JHR: General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Lifecycle. Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this tradeoff, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using microdata for 11 countries from IALS, we find strong and robust support for such a tradeoff, especially in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. German Microcensus data and Austrian administrative data confirm the results for within-occupational-group analysis and for exogenous variation from plant closures, respectively.

Marc Piopiunik, Jens Ruhose, IZA: Immigration, Regional Conditions, and Crime: Evidence from an Allocation Policy in Germany. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 3 million people with German ancestors immigrated to Germany under a special law granting immediate citizenship. Exploiting the exogenous allocation of ethnic German immigrants by German authorities across regions upon arrival, we find that immigration significantly increases crime. The crime impact of immigration depends strongly on local labor market conditions, with strong impacts in regions with high unemployment. Similarly, we find substantially stronger effects in regions with high preexisting crime levels or large shares of foreigners.

Robby Berman, Big Think: How About a New Theory of Evolution with Less Natural Selection? The modern synthesis emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, and it’s what’s taught in schools today. It states that evolution is the product of small genetic variations (Mendel’s contribution) that survive, or not (Darwin’s process of natural selection). Some of the scientists at the Royal Society’s “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology” meeting say that this isn’t quite the case, and that there’s a third element that needs to be incorporated: Behavior and environment can also cause evolutionary changes. Carl Zimmer of Quanta, who attended the conference, says, "The researchers don’t argue that the modern synthesis is wrong — just that it doesn’t capture the full richness of evolution.”

Lexington, The Economist: The rise of the Herbal Tea Party. Some years ago David Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report, spotted a way to predict the political leanings of any given county: check whether it is home to a Whole Foods supermarket, purveyor of heirloom tomatoes and gluten-free dog biscuits to the Subaru-owning classes; or to a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a restaurant chain that offers chicken and dumplings and other comfort foods to mostly rural, often southern customers. Mr Trump won 76% of Cracker Barrel counties and 22% of Whole Foods counties, the Cook Political Report calculates. That 54 percentage-point gap is the widest ever: when George W. Bush was elected in 2000 it was 31 points. Eight years later when Barack Obama took office, it was 43. Trump opponents must decide whether they can live with so wide a Whole Foods-Cracker Barrel gap.