NBER Publications by Eric Bond

Using a newly created microeconomic archive of U.S. imports at the tariff-line level for 1930-33, we construct industry-level tariff wedges incorporating the input-output structure of U.S. economy and the heterogenous role of imports across sectors of the economy. We use these wedges to show that the average tariff rate of 46% in 1933 substantially understated the true impact of the Smoot-Hawley (SH) tariff structure, which we estimate to be equivalent to a uniform tariff rate of 70%. We use these wedges to calculate the impact of the Smoot Hawley tariffs on total factor productivity and welfare. In our benchmark parameterization, we find that tariff protection reduced TFP by 1.2% relative to free trade prior to the Smoot Hawley legislation. TFP fell by an additional 0.5% between 1930 and ...

Relative to their counterparts in high-income regions, entrepreneurs in developing countries face less efficient financial markets, more volatile macroeconomic conditions, and higher entry costs. This paper develops a dynamic empirical model that links these features of the business environment to cross-firm productivity distributions, entrepreneurs’ welfare, and patterns of industrial evolution. Applied to panel data on Colombian apparel producers, the model yields econometric estimates of a credit market imperfection index, the sunk costs of creating a new business, and a risk aversion index (inter alia). Model-based counterfactual experiments suggest that improved intermediation could dramatically increase the return on assets for entrepreneurial households with modest wealth, and that ...