Trend shocks and the countercyclical U.S. current account

From 1960 to 2009, the U.S. current account balance has tended to decline during expansions and improve in recessions. We argue that shocks to the trend growth rate of productivity can help explain the countercyclical U.S. current account. Our framework is a two‐country, two‐good business cycle model in which international asset trade is limited to a single, non‐contingent bond. We identify trend and transitory shocks to U.S. productivity using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. The specification that best matches the data assigns a large role to trend shocks. The estimated model also captures key facts regarding international co‐movement.     

Nepotism,incentives and the academic success of college students

This study investigates the role of parent-owned businesses on children's college success and post-college aspirations by using a unique data set from a private university in Turkey. The data set matches college students' administrative records with survey responses. The presence of self-employed parents and family businesses has a strong negative association with college success even after accounting for observed ability, parental background, and various individual characteristics. An explanation for the lower GPAs of the children of self-employed parents is that in the presence of parent-owned businesses students have a larger set of post-graduation options and are more likely to plan on becoming self-employed due to intergenerational transfer of self-employment. Hence, these students may not exert as much effort in acquiring the task-specific career-oriented human capital taught in college. In line with expectations, we find that the children of self-employed parents are more likely to have entrepreneurial intent and are less likely to plan to attend graduate school.