SHOCKS AND FRICTIONS IN THAI ECONOMY: THROUGH THE LENS OF BUSINESS CYCLE ACCOUNTING

This paper applies business cycle accounting methodology to analyze the sources of aggregate fluctuations in Thai economy, especially during the recent severe recessions in 1997–1998 and 2008–2009. This exploration helps researchers uncover possible shocks and frictions that drive business cycle in a small and open economy within a minimal model set-up. Under this methodology, a fluctuation in aggregate output can be accounted for by exogenous time-varying wedges, namely efficiency wedge, investment wedge, labor wedge, government wedge, etc. This study found that the efficiency wedge is essential in accounting for aggregate output, consumption and investment fluctuation, while the bond wedge, which only present in an open economy setting, is a prime factor in accounting for movement in current accounts. I conducted counterfactual experiments to see what accounts for the output drop during recent recessions. I find that the efficiency wedge played a key role in recent recessions in Thailand, while the investment wedge was accounted for slow economic recovery after the recessions.

Distortions in Production Networks*

How does an economy’s production structure determine its macroeconomic response to sectoral distortions? We study a static, multisector framework in which production is organized in an input-output network and production decisions are distorted. Sectoral distortions manifest at the aggregate level via two channels: total factor productivity (TFP) and the labor wedge. We show that near efficiency, distortions have zero first-order effects on TFP and nonzero first-order effects on the labor wedge, and that a sufficient statistic for the latter are the Domar weights. We thereby provide a Hulten-like theorem for the aggregate effects of sectoral distortions. A quantitative application of the model to the 2008–09 financial crisis suggests that the U.S. input-output structure amplified financial distortions by roughly a factor of two during the crisis.

REAL WAGE RIGIDITY, HETEROGENEITY, AND THE BUSINESS CYCLES

This paper investigates the quantitative implications of real wage rigidities and heterogeneity for two long-lasting puzzles in the business cycle literature: the low correlation between total hours worked and labor productivity and the large volatility of the labor wedge, defined as a gap between the marginal rate of substitution of aggregate leisure for aggregate consumption and the marginal product of aggregate labor. I shed light on these issues by extending a heterogeneous-agent model with an indivisible labor supply choice to real wage rigidities. I find that a small amount of real wage stickiness would be sufficient to resolve both anomalies when long-term wage contracts and heterogeneity are taken into account.

Optimal Taxation with Risky Human Capital

We study optimal tax policies in a life-cycle economy with permanent ability differences and risky human capital investments that have both an unobservable component, learning effort, and an observable component, schooling. The optimal policies balance redistribution across agents, insurance against human capital shocks, and incentives to learn and work. In the optimum, (i ) high-ability agents face risky consumption while low-ability agents are insured; (ii ) the optimal schooling subsidy is substantial but less than 100 percent; (iii) if utility is separable in labor and learning effort, the inverse labor wedge follows a random walk; and (iv ) if the utility is not separable then the “no distortion at the top” result does not apply. The welfare gains from switching to the optimal tax system are about 1 percent in annual consumption equivalents. (JEL D15, H21, H24, I26, J24)