The Regional Specialization Trade-off

[Job market paper]

In 1950, highly specialized U.S. regions had higher per capita incomes than those with greater industrial diversity. Since then, however, the more specialized regions have grown persistently slower. I rationalize this novel finding in a dynamic multi-industry model featuring two opposing forces. First, specialization raises productivity via agglomeration economies. Second, it increases exposure to sectoral shocks. Real factor adjustment costs and financial frictions make reallocation in response to shocks costly and long-lasting. Disciplined by U.S. Census data, the model explains half of the observed relationship between initial specialization and subsequent growth, with financial frictions accounting for more than half of this adverse effect. A constrained-efficient planner allocation reveals that less specialization can raise welfare by reducing a region’s exposure to industry-specific downturns.

Monetary Policy in Currency Unions with Unequal Countries (with S. De Ferra, K. Mitman and F. Romei)

[CEPR Working Paper] (Submitted)

We investigate how the composition of expenditure shapes the transmission of monetary policy in a currency union. European Monetary Union data reveal three facts: (1) higher inequality countries have larger service expenditure shares; (2) monetary policy has a weaker output impact in these high-service-share, high-inequality countries; and (3) monetary policy induces systematic trade flows between high- and low-service-share countries. We develop a New Keynesian model with non-homothetic preferences and heterogeneous sectoral income that rationalizes these facts. Pro-cyclical inequality, driven by wealthier households' greater income exposure to services, buffers poorer households' consumption to contractionary shocks, dampening overall policy transmission. Our findings suggest that accounting for cross-country differences in consumption and income distributions is essential for understanding common monetary policy.