Little is known about migration to cities in the era before railways. The column uses data on the origins of women arrested for prostitution in Paris in the 1760s, women registered as prostitutes in the 1830s and 1850s, men holding identity cards during the French Revolution, as well as everyone buried in 1833 to examine patterns of migration. Migration was highest from areas with high living standards, and the impact of distance fell as transport improved. Distance was a stronger deterrent to females than to males, consistent with more limited employment opportunities for women.
Does inflation targeting help absorb large shocks? This column shows that it implies higher output growth and lower inflation when countries are hit by natural disasters. Hard targeting works in these cases; soft targeting does not. This has impacts for how we evaluate the success of inflation targeting during the global crisis, but also for the debate on flexible inflation targeting.
Economists have often interpreted the observation that movements in real exchange rates are large, persistent, and closely track movements in nominal rates while cross-country differences in inflation rates are small and stable as direct evidence for nominal price rigidities. This column uses the microdata behind the construction of the consumer price index to isolate the real exchange rate for the subset of goods that change prices. This ‘reset exchange rate’ moves with the real exchange rate, suggesting that sticky prices are not a primary factor in dampening the response of inflation to exchange rate shocks.
Recent events on the international stage have reignited the debate on trade and currency wars. This column compares two forms of non-cooperative policies – import tariffs and currency devaluations – within a single framework. The results show that tariffs and devaluations do not have equivalent effects on trade flows. A 1% depreciation of the importer's currency reduces imports by around 0.5% in current dollars, whereas an increase in import tariffs by 1 percentage point reduces imports by around 1.4%.
A large proportion of workers are employed in licensed occupations whose entry conditions and economic returns are significantly shaped by regulation. This column examines the consequences of two waves of liberalisation in professional services in Italy since the 2000s for intergenerational mobility and allocative efficiency. The analysis reveals a substantial decrease in the propensity to follow the same career as one’s parents, particularly among less able children, suggesting that anticompetitive regulation might produce inefficiencies in the allocation of talents across occupations.
Other Recent Columns:
- On the economics of the Google Android case
- Migrant networks boost trade
- Valuing ‘exclusive eyeballs’
- Google Android case: Milestone or millstone?
- Household heterogeneity and the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area
- Demand for automated driving technology
- Inequality in the Middle East
- Human capital and the supply of agricultural workers
- Impacts of changing the structure of minimum wages
- Protectionism and the business cycle
- Trends in mortality inequality in the US and France
- The economic costs of the US-China trade war
- Asset prices and wealth inequality
- Economic policy for artificial intelligence
- Selective attention to personal finances
- Advancing the evaluation of tax reforms: A new IMF database
- The ethnic segregation of immigrants in the US from 1850 to 1940
- On the prosperity of countries
- The impact of waiting time targets in emergency departments
- Inequality and ordinary living standards in rich countries
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Vox eBooks
Casey, Crane, Gensler, Johnson, Narula, 16 July 2018
Vox Talks
Events
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20 - 21 August 2018 / Goethe University Frankfurt / Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA) and the Research Center SAFE (Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe) at Goethe University Frankfurt
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27 - 28 August 2018 / Sala del Sindaco, Palazzo Orsini, Galatina (Lecce) / Banque de France and Paris School of Economics
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2 - 5 September 2018 / Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg / Verein fuer Socialpolitik
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10 - 11 September 2018 / Leipzig University / Leipzig University, European Association of Young Economists
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12 - 13 September 2018 / Rome, Italy / European Center of Sustainable Development , CIT University
