E-Dissertationen

Essays in International Economics and Macrofinance

2026-07-10T14:03:04Z

Essays in International Economics and Macrofinance Meyer, Timothy Economic interdependence increasingly has political implications. At the international level, the tides of global trade and finance are currently shifting, with countries like the U.S. and China increasingly leveraging economic interdependence for political goals (Gopinath, 2023). Within countries, concerns about income and wealth inequality shaping the political landscape have become central to political debates (Piketty, 2014). Although these phenomena operate at different levels, they share a common feature: economic relationships are not merely market outcomes, but are embedded in the political system, within and across borders. This dissertation studies this interplay between economics and politics across and within countries.
To study the interplay between economics and politics, it is often useful to draw on economic history. Many present challenges, such as wars, crises and geopolitical competition are not new, but have recurred throughout the past century. Therefore, this dissertation often draws on newly collected historical data, in combination with modern empirical and theoretical tools, to study these questions systematically. The chapters of this dissertation are self-contained, and each ends with an appendix that collects additional details.
The first chapter, which is joint work with Nicolas Wesseler, studies how countries can leverage economic interdependence for political goals in a geopolitical competition. The international relations literature has categorized the economic tools employed by hegemonic powers into carrots (e.g., foreign aid) and sticks (e.g., tariff threats) (Baldwin, 1985). We develop a model in which two competing hegemons use carrots and sticks to affect the geopolitical alignment of third countries. The model formalizes these concepts and guides our empirical analysis.
To measure the effects of economic tools on geopolitical alignment empirically, we draw on a defining episode of hegemonic competition: The Cold War. We measure the size of carrots, sticks and geopolitical alignment using newly constructed historical data. We digitize declassified data from the CIA to measure the economic and military aid providedby the U.S. and the Soviet Union and leverage a model of international trade to compute the trade dependence of each country on the superpowers, which corresponds to the size of the stick. We estimate the causal effects of carrots and sticks on geopolitical alignment using a shift-share instrument for foreign aid and exogenous variation in trade dependence. We find that geoeconomic tools increase alignment, but obtaining alignment is expensive for hegemons.
We combine the model with the empirical estimates to study the U.S.-China competition and evaluate the potential consequences of a shutdown of USAID. In response, China is predicted to pull back: While the USAID shutdown creates an opportunity for China to step in, the absence of competition ultimately allows China to buy alignment at a lower cost. The world shifts away from the U.S., with initial U.S. allies potentially moving the most.
The second chapter of this dissertation studies modern financial interdependence around the world. The U.S. is the world's largest asset market and occupies a central role in the global financial system (Gourinchas and Rey, 2007). In the past years, the U.S. stock market has become increasingly central in world asset markets, with foreigners now holding more than 20% of U.S. equities. The paper studies the global distribution and implication of the large capital gains the U.S. stock market has generated in the past decade. I construct the global distribution of U.S. asset holdings, carefully accounting for the role of tax havens. The gains foreign countries have made on U.S. external assets are concentrated and large in developed countries, while developing countries have been mostly bypassed.
To assess the welfare implications of these capital gains, I adopt a sufficient statistics approach. In contrast to the large wealth changes, most countries so far did not benefit much in welfare terms. This is because up to now, foreigners have not reacted to these gains and held their portfolios relatively unchanged.
In the third chapter, which is joint work with Luis Bauluz, we turn to domestic distributional questions. This paper examines an understudied aspect of the wealth distribution, the age dimension of wealth inequality. Using historical microdata on household wealth across U.S. cohorts since the 1950's, we document that recent cohorts accumulate more wealth over their life cycle, relative to their income, leading to a widening age-wealth gap. These developments are driven both by rising saving rates at middle ages and by large capital gains on housing and equity. After retirement, we show that the elderly are increasingly dissaving in the face of large capital gains, holding their wealth levels constant.
The macroeconomic effect of these trends is that aggregate wealth and saving are increasingly driven by elderly households, which we analyze by disaggregating the national saving rate across age groups. In terms of welfare inequality, we show that capital gains in equity and housing constituted a welfare transfer from young savers to old asset owners.
The final chapter, which is joint work with Ralph Luetticke, Gernot Müller and Moritz Schularick, combines geopolitics and inequality. We study the impact of interstate wars on the distribution of income and wealth. War is often described as a "Great Leveler" (Scheidel, 2018). However, we show its effects are not uniform across income and wealth. Using historical data, we show that wars on a country's soil lower top-1% income shares by more than 20%, while top-1% wealth shares fall by only about 10%.
We combine the historical evidence with a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) model to study the underlying mechanisms suggested by the historical literature, destruction, taxation and inflation. The main force behind the leveling and its effects across income and wealth is destruction, which squeezes profit income at the very top but leaves relative wealth inequality less affected. We validate this mechanism in new data on inequality across German towns and cross-country data on firm profits.

Essays on Macrofinance and Inflation

2026-07-08T07:36:13Z

Essays on Macrofinance and Inflation Ranaldi, Lorenzo This dissertation studies how financial balance sheets - of investors, banks, and households - transmit macroeconomic shocks and household decisions into real outcomes. It consists of three independent chapters.
The first chapter examines the response of real asset returns to unexpected inflation in a panel of 18 advanced economies from 1870 to 2023, using newly digitized OECD forecasts combined with model-based surprises. Real returns on stocks, housing, and long-term bonds decline persistently after an inflation surprise, and exchange-rate-regime variation identifies the central-bank response — not the origin of inflation — as the dominant channel. The second chapter traces the same shock through banks, which lend long and borrow short: unexpected inflation erodes the real value of bank assets relative to liabilities and tightens lending constraints. Combining long-run macro data with Portuguese bank–firm administrative records, it shows that a one-percentage-point inflation surprise reduces bank capital and real loans by roughly three percent within five years, with banks holding larger maturity gaps cutting credit more and their borrowers investing less. The third chapter turns to households, using three decades of Dutch survey data matched to security-level prices in a tax-free setting to document how paper capital gains become realized income: which positions are liquidated, by whom, in response to what, and how the proceeds are allocated across consumption, housing, and reinvestment.
Together, the chapters argue that the structure of balance sheets shapes the magnitude, heterogeneity, and persistence of responses to inflation and to household portfolio decisions.

Essays on Spatial Inequality, Mobility, and Labor Market Policy

2026-07-03T12:53:21Z

Essays on Spatial Inequality, Mobility, and Labor Market Policy Weber, Johannes This dissertation consists of three essays on spatial inequality, worker mobility, and labor market policy. The first chapter studies how workers' careers differ depending on the local labor market in which they enter employment. Using German administrative data, it shows that worker mobility is low and that workers who move do not systematically relocate to regions with lower unemployment. It further documents that workers starting their careers in high-unemployment regions experience more unemployment, lower wages, slower wage growth, and substantially lower accumulated earnings.
The second chapter examines why workers move so little despite large regional differences in career prospects. It documents that high-rent regions offer faster wage growth rather than substantially higher entry wages and that regional occupational specialization accounts for much of the variation in local wage profiles. A calibrated general-equilibrium life-cycle model with region-specific human-capital accumulation and local housing markets shows that high rents deter young workers from moving, while human capital that is most productive in the region where it was accumulated creates lock-in effects for older workers. Expanding housing supply in high-growth regions increases mobility, output, and welfare.
The third chapter compares short-time work with lay-off taxes as instruments for reducing inefficient employment separations. In a search-and-matching model with risk-averse workers and financially constrained firms, lay-off taxes reduce inefficient separations without distorting working hours, but they cannot affect separations at constrained firms that are unable to insure workers against adverse shocks through wages. Short-time work can prevent such separations and provide income insurance, but does so at the cost of inefficient reductions in working hours. Quantitatively, short-time work becomes the preferred instrument when the share of financially constrained firms is sufficiently large.
Taken together, the essays show how regional and firm-level heterogeneity shapes workers' careers, mobility decisions, and the effectiveness of labor-market policies.

Essays on Human Capital

2026-05-11T11:30:12Z

Essays on Human Capital Heiler, Simon Julian This thesis comprises three essays that examine how human capital shapes economic outcomes across three distinct dimensions: as a motive for individual choices, as a determinant of industry composition, and as a measure of allocative efficiency. Each essay combines novel empirical evidence with quantitative macroeconomic models to study a specific channel through which the accumulation, availability, or distribution of human capital influences economic activity.
Chapter 1, "Worker Heterogeneity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance", studies how endogenous human capital accumulation interacts with the design of unemployment insurance (UI). Using an OLG model with learning-by-doing, depreciation during unemployment, and worker heterogeneity in age and ability, calibrated to US data, I show that fully conditional age- and ability-dependent benefits generate welfare gains of 0.35% of consumption. A simple non-conditional policy combining a replacement rate with a benefit floor and cap captures roughly 60% of these gains (about 0.2% of consumption). The non-linearity introduced by floor and cap mimics the targeting of conditional policies because income correlates strongly with age and ability, allowing policymakers to align UI with workers' own incentives to invest in experience without conditioning benefits on individual characteristics.
Chapter 2, "Demographic Change and Technological Choice", analyzes how demographic shifts alter the relative availability of human capital and thereby reshape firms' technology choices across sectors. Applying the German Federal Employment Agency's labor scarcity methodology over an extended horizon, I document a structural break around 2010 after which labor scarcity rises sharply in both production and services, accompanied by a pronounced increase in software and R&D investment in production sectors but largely flat investment in services. I develop a multi-sector model that combines demography-induced capital abundance with directed technological change, in which the substitutability between machines and human capital determines whether a sector becomes high-tech or low-tech. The model replicates the observed investment patterns and shows that secular structural change and technological polarization are, in part, the consequence of a fundamental change in the availability of human capital.
Chapter 3, "Labor Market Mismatch", examines how the alignment of idle human capital and vacant positions across geography and occupation affects labor market efficiency. Building on historical reports of the German Federal Employment Agency and the Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB), I construct a novel dataset on vacancies and searching workers in Germany spanning nearly four decades. Extending the framework of Şahin, Song, Topa, and Violante (2014), I derive an explicit planner solution and develop measures of mismatch that account for sectoral heterogeneity in matching efficiency, job loss rates, and labor productivity. The results indicate economically meaningful mismatch in the German labor market, but also suggest that the distributional costs of policies aimed at reducing it are likely to far exceed their efficiency gains.
Taken together, the three essays underscore that there is no single, universally applicable concept of human capital: each perspective requires its own measurement and modeling strategy. At the same time, the underlying mechanisms are deeply interconnected, as individual accumulation decisions, sectoral demand for skills, and the spatial and occupational distribution of workers jointly shape aggregate outcomes. The thesis advances both methodology and data for the analysis of human capital and points to several promising avenues for future research.; Die vorliegende Dissertation umfasst drei Aufsätze, die untersuchen, wie Humankapital wirtschaftliche Ergebnisse entlang dreier unterschiedlicher Dimensionen prägt: als Motiv individueller Entscheidungen, als Determinante der sektoralen Zusammensetzung einer Volkswirtschaft und als Maß der allokativen Effizienz. Jeder Aufsatz verbindet neue empirische Evidenz mit quantitativen makroökonomischen Modellen, um einen spezifischen Kanal zu analysieren, über den die Akkumulation, die Verfügbarkeit oder die Verteilung von Humankapital wirtschaftliche Aktivität beeinflusst.
Kapitel 1, "Worker Heterogeneity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance", untersucht das Zusammenspiel von endogener Humankapitalakkumulation und der Ausgestaltung der Arbeitslosenversicherung. In einem auf US-Daten kalibrierten OLG-Modell mit Learning-by-Doing, Humankapitalabschreibung während der Arbeitslosigkeit und Heterogenität der Beschäftigten in Alter und Fähigkeit zeige ich, dass eine vollständig konditionale, alters- und fähigkeitsabhängige Politik Wohlfahrtsgewinne in Höhe von 0,35 % des Konsums erzielt. Eine einfache nicht-konditionale Politik, bestehend aus einer Lohnersatzrate, einem Mindest- und einem Höchstbetrag, realisiert rund 60 % dieser Gewinne (etwa 0,2 % des Konsums). Die durch Mindest- und Höchstbetrag erzeugte Nichtlinearität imitiert die Zielgenauigkeit konditionaler Politiken, da Einkommen stark mit Alter und Fähigkeit korreliert ist. Auf diese Weise lässt sich die Arbeitslosenversicherung mit den Anreizen der Beschäftigten zur Investition in Erwerbserfahrung in Einklang bringen, ohne Leistungen an individuelle Merkmale zu knüpfen.
Kapitel 2, "Demographic Change and Technological Choice", analysiert, wie demografische Veränderungen die relative Verfügbarkeit von Humankapital verschieben und dadurch die Technologieentscheidungen von Unternehmen über Sektoren hinweg beeinflussen. Mittels einer neuartigen Anwendung der Methodik der Bundesagentur für Arbeit zur Messung von Arbeitskräfteknappheit über einen längeren Zeithorizont dokumentiere ich einen Strukturbruch um das Jahr 2010, ab dem die Arbeitskräfteknappheit sowohl in der Produktion als auch im Dienstleistungssektor deutlich zunimmt, begleitet von einem starken Anstieg der Investitionen in Software sowie Forschung und Entwicklung in den Produktionssektoren bei weitgehend stagnierenden Investitionen im Dienstleistungssektor. Ich entwickle ein Mehrsektorenmodell, das demografisch bedingte Kapitalreichlichkeit mit gerichtetem technologischem Wandel verknüpft und in dem die Substituierbarkeit zwischen Maschinen und Humankapital darüber entscheidet, ob ein Sektor zu einem High-Tech- oder Low-Tech-Sektor wird. Das Modell repliziert die beobachteten Investitionsmuster und zeigt, dass struktureller Wandel und technologische Polarisierung zumindest teilweise Folge einer fundamentalen Verschiebung in der Verfügbarkeit von Humankapital sind.
Kapitel 3, "Labor Market Mismatch", untersucht, wie die räumliche und berufliche Zuordnung ungenutzten Humankapitals zu offenen Stellen die Effizienz des Arbeitsmarktes beeinflusst. Aufbauend auf historischen Berichten der Bundesagentur für Arbeit und der Stichprobe der Integrierten Arbeitsmarktbiografien (SIAB) konstruiere ich einen neuen Datensatz zu offenen Stellen und Arbeitsuchenden in Deutschland, der nahezu vier Jahrzehnte umfasst. In Erweiterung des Rahmens von Şahin, Song, Topa und Violante (2014) leite ich eine explizite Lösung des Planerproblems her und entwickle Mismatch-Maße, die sektorale Heterogenität in Matching-Effizienz, Trennungsraten und Arbeitsproduktivität berücksichtigen. Die Ergebnisse weisen auf einen ökonomisch relevanten Mismatch im deutschen Arbeitsmarkt hin, legen jedoch zugleich nahe, dass die Verteilungskosten von Politiken zu seiner Reduktion deren Effizienzgewinne voraussichtlich deutlich übersteigen.
In ihrer Gesamtheit verdeutlichen die drei Aufsätze, dass es kein einheitliches, universell anwendbares Konzept von Humankapital gibt: Jede Perspektive erfordert eine eigene Mess- und Modellierungsstrategie. Zugleich sind die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen eng miteinander verflochten, da individuelle Akkumulationsentscheidungen, sektorale Nachfrage nach Qualifikationen sowie die räumliche und berufliche Verteilung der Beschäftigten gemeinsam aggregierte Ergebnisse prägen. Die Arbeit leistet damit sowohl methodische als auch empirische Beiträge zur Analyse von Humankapital und weist auf vielversprechende Felder für künftige Forschung hin.