David Atkin, MIT

"The incidence of misallocation"

Abstract

The presence of pervasive market failures affecting economic activity is arguably the key feature that distinguishes developing countries from developed ones. A vast literature has produced a deep understanding of the implications of distortions for misallocation and aggregate standards of living. What is far less well understood, however, is the extent to which the burden of these distortions is shared equally across households. This project combines administrative microdata with general equilibrium models of heterogeneous agents in a distorted economic environment to obtain answers to this question in the context of Chile.

Contact person: Neda Trifkovic