Fernando Parro

The Impact of Regional and Sectoral Productivity Changes on the U.S. Economy

We study the impact of intersectoral and interregional trade linkages in propagating disaggregated productivity changes to the rest of the economy. Using U.S. regional and industry data, we obtain the aggregate, regional and sectoral elasticities of measured total factor productivity, GDP, and employment to regional and sectoral productivity changes. We find that the elasticities vary significantly depending on the sectors and regions affected, and are importantly determined by the spatial structure of the economy. We use our calibrated model to perform a variety of counterfactual exercises including several specific studies of the aggregate and disaggregate effects of shocks to productivity and infrastructure. The specific episodes we study include the boom in California’s computer industry, the productivity boom in North Dakota associated with the shale oil boom, the disruptions in New York’s finance and real state industries during the 2008 crisis, as well as the effect of the destruction of infrastructure in Louisiana following hurricane Katrina.

Chapter 3 Welfare Gains from Changing Partners in a Trade Bloc: The Case of MERCOSUR

This chapter applies the new heterogeneous firm CGE model of Caliendo and Parro (2009) to determine what the Ricardian gains are from changing partners for members of a trade bloc. We focus on the MERCOSUR case, using a model with 48 sectors and 5 countries. Motivated by recent policy discussions, we quantify Uruguays trade and welfare effects from signing a Free Trade Agreement with the United States and leaving MERCOSUR. We find positive welfare effects for Uruguay from bilaterally reducing tariffs with the United States. Most of the gains come from having access to lower-cost intermediate inputs for production. We then consider the policy experiment of bilaterally eliminating tariffs between all members of MERCOSUR and the United States. We find that Uruguay has the largest gains, while Argentina and Brazil do not benefit much. This chapter also illustrates how new models are a promising tool for the analysis of trade.