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Discussion Paper
Another Look at Residual Seasonality in GDP
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP rose at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, a step down from the 2.3 percent pace in the second half of last year. However, we argue in this note that residual seasonality is unlikely to be the primary reason for the slowdown in first-quarter growth this year.
Working Paper
Household response to the 2008 tax rebates: survey evidence and aggregate implications
Only about one-fifth of respondents in the Reuters/University of Michigan survey report that the 2008 tax rebates led them to mostly increase spending, while over half said it would lead them to mostly pay off debt. Of those in the mostly-spend category, the response was swift, with over 80 percent reporting increasing their spending within three months of receiving their rebate. Older households, households with higher wealth and higher income, and those expecting future income growth were generally more likely to spend the rebates. A review of other surveys confirms the general pattern of ...
Working Paper
Check in the mail or more in the paycheck: does the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus depend on how it is delivered?
Recent fiscal policies have aimed to stimulate household spending. In 2008, most households received one-time economic stimulus payments. In 2009, most working households received the Making Work Pay tax credit in the form of reduced withholding; other households, mainly retirees, received one-time payments. This paper quantifies the spending response to these different policies and examines whether the spending response differed according to whether the stimulus was delivered as a one-time payment or as a flow of payments in the form of reduced withholding. Based on responses from a ...
Discussion Paper
Deleveraging: Is It Over and What Was It?
Anyone who has followed the commentary on consumer spending in recent years has heard a lot about household deleveraging.
Discussion Paper
Do Lower Gasoline Prices Boost Confidence?
A gallon of gasoline currently costs one third less than it did last summer.
Discussion Paper
Residual Seasonality in GDP
With a second year in a row of unusually weak first-quarter growth, some analysts have argued that there may be residual seasonality in the GDP data, that is, a predictable seasonal pattern remains in the published data.
Working Paper
Balance-Sheet Households and Fiscal Stimulus: Lessons from the Payroll Tax Cut and Its Expiration
Balance-sheet repair drove the response of a significant fraction of households to fiscal stimulus following the Great Recession. By combining survey, behavioral, and time-series evidence on the 2011 payroll tax cut and its expiration in 2013, this papers identifies and analyzes households who smooth debt repayment. These "balance-sheet households" are as prevalent as "permanent-income households," who smooth consumption in response to the temporary tax cut, and outnumber "constrained households," who temporarily boost spending. The asymmetric spending response of balance-sheet ...
Working Paper
From Transactions Data to Economic Statistics: Constructing Real-time, High-frequency, Geographic Measures of Consumer Spending
Access to timely information on consumer spending is important to economic policymakers. The Census Bureau's monthly retail trade survey is a primary source for monitoring consumer spending nationally, but it is not well suited to study localized or short-lived economic shocks. Moreover, lags in the publication of the Census estimates and subsequent, sometimes large, revisions diminish its usefulness for real-time analysis. Expanding the Census survey to include higher frequencies and subnational detail would be costly and would add substantially to respondent burden. We take an alternative ...
Discussion Paper
"Limited Attention" and Inflation Expectations of Households
In this note, we use the household-level data in the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers, including respondents' own changes in expectations, to document new signs that households pay limited attention to inflation developments.
Discussion Paper
Shedding Light on Our Economic and Financial Lives
In November and December of 2017, we interviewed over 12,000 individuals, representative of all adults in the United States, about their economic and financial lives. Here we discuss the responses on three important economic issues: the role of economic conditions in the opioid epidemic; jobs with irregular schedules and varying income as a potential barrier to full employment; and how low rates of geographic mobility may relate to family support networks.