糖心TV

Title to be advised.

Title: Contracts from the Horse鈥檚 Mouth (with Hyungmin Park)

Title: Immigration and Productivity: Unpacking the Role of Spatial Sorting (with Jan U Auerbach, Julian Neira, Rish Singhania)

Abstract: Foreign-born and US-born workers sort differently across space. This paper examines how spatial sorting affects US productivity by disentangling the roles of worker productivity and local amenities. Using data on labor market outcomes and new measures of user cost of capital across regions, we identify spatial distributions of local amenities and productivity by worker birthplace, including birth state for US-born workers, in a general form under minimal assumptions. We use a productivity decomposition as a diagnostic tool to isolate channels through which immigration contributes to aggregate TFP. The decomposition applied to US Census data from 1980 to 2018 reveals that amenity-induced spatial sorting is the primary driver of TFP gains from immigration, with the largest share coming from foreign-born workers mitigating the birth-state bias of US-born workers. Counterfactual exercises show that the birth-state-bias-mitigation channel accounts for at least 90% of TFP gains from immigration.

Title: Obfuscation in Competitive Markets (with Keyu Wu)

Abstract: In many markets, firms increase product complexity through add-on features, which can make the evaluation and comparison of products difficult and thus increase buyers' search cost. Does this product obfuscation limit buyers' search behavior and induce them to buy overpriced products? And if so, why does competition not eliminate obfuscated products? We show - based on competitive experimental markets - that if add-ons merely complicate the products without generating additional surplus, obfuscation via product complexity indeed becomes fragile because buyers display an aversion against complex products. However, in the presence of surplus-enhancing add-ons, obfuscation via product complexity becomes a stable market feature that severely constrains the depth and breadth of buyers' search. Sellers anticipate and take advantage of this by hiding unattractive product features and selling add-ons persistently above marginal cost. Even the most favourably priced product in the market is offered above marginal cost, and buyers persistently fail to find the best product such that inferior products have a good chance of being bought, leading to enduring price dispersion. Surplus-enhancing obfuscation opportunities are the causal driver of persistent profits and price dispersion because if we remove these opportunities, overall prices quickly converge to marginal cost.