NBER Publications by Yongseok Shin

We quantify the role of financial frictions and the initial misallocation of resources in explaining development dynamics. Following a reform that triggers efficient reallocation of resources, our model economy with financial frictions converges slowly to the new steady state—it takes twice as long to cover half the distance to the steady state as the neoclassical growth model. Investment rates and total factor productivity start out low and rise over time. These model dynamics are endogenously determined by the extent of initial resource misallocation and the degree of financial frictions. We present data from post-war miracle economies on the evolution of macro aggregates, factor reallocation, and establishment size distribution, which support the aggregate and micro-level implications o...

Why doesn’t capital flow into fast-growing countries? In this paper, we provide a quantitative framework incorporating heterogeneous producers and underdeveloped domestic financial markets to study the joint dynamics of total factor productivity (TFP) and capital flows. When an unexpected once-and-for-all reform eliminates non-financial distortions and liberalizes capital flows, the TFP of our model economy rises gradually and capital flows out of it. The rise in TFP reflects efficient reallocation of capital and talent, a process drawn out by frictions in domestic financial markets. The concurrent capital outflows are driven by the positive response of domestic saving to higher returns, and by the sluggish response of domestic investment to the higher TFP—the latter being another ramifica...

Income differences across countries primarily reflect differences in total factor productivity (TFP). More disaggregated data show that the TFP gap between rich and poor countries varies systematically across industrial sectors of the economy: Poor countries are particularly unproductive in tradable and investment goods sectors. In this paper, we develop a quantitatively-oriented framework to explain such cross-country patterns in aggregate and sectoral TFP. We start by documenting that an important distinction between sectors is their average establishment size. For example, establishments in tradable and investment goods sectors operate at much larger scales than those in the non-tradable sector. In our model, sectors with larger scales of operation have more financing needs, and are hen...