Search Results
Journal Article
How the U.S. economy resembles a (very) big business
This article presents basic tools for measuring different business lines? contributions to the U.S. economy?s business cycles, and it applies these to measure the exposure of a large conglomerate to macroeconomic risks.
Journal Article
Long-run labor market dynamics and short-run inflation
Working Paper
Macroeconomic effects of employment reallocation
Major shifts in employment between industries and between firms within industries usually accompany recessions. Although this observation suggests that exogenous changes in the optimal allocation of labor are an important source of aggregate employment fluctuations, the macroeconomic significance of such shocks has remained unknown. This paper empirically assesses the role of reallocation shocks for cyclical employment fluctuations, and investigates the relationship between inter- and intrasectoral employment flows. In an analysis of total employment and the share employed in manufacturing, ...
Journal Article
Odyssean Forward Guidance in Monetary Policy: A Primer
This article shows how central bank forward guidance can improve macroeconomic outcomes by altering current expectations of future inflation and output.
Working Paper
Last-in first-out oligopoly dynamics
This paper extends the static analysis of oligopoly structure into an infinite- horizon setting with sunk costs and demand uncertainty. The observation that exit rates decline with firm age motivates the assumption of last-in first- out dynamics: An entrant expects to produce no longer than any incumbent. This selects an essentially unique Markov-perfect equilibrium. With mild restrictions on the demand shocks, a sequence of thresholds describes firms? equilibrium entry and survival decisions. Bresnahan and Reiss?s (1993) empirical analysis of oligopolists? entry and exit assumes that such ...
Journal Article
The Macroeconomic Effects of the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act
The 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act raised government spending caps by $300 billion for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. While spending does not increase immediately, private sector investment and consumption may respond ahead of an anticipated fiscal stimulus. This Economic Perspectives article assesses the strength of this mechanism based on the private sector?s expectations.
Conference Paper
The macroeconomic transition to high household debt
Aggressive deregulation of the household debt market in the early 1980s triggered innovations that greatly reduced the required home equity of U.S. households, allowing them to cash-out a large part of accumulated equity. In 1982, home equity equaled 71 percent of GDP; so this generated a borrowing shock of huge macroeconomic proportions. The combination of increasing household debt from 43 to 56 percent of GDP with high interest rates during the 1982-1990 period is consistent with such a shock to households? demand for funds. This paper uses a quantitative general equilibrium model of ...
Working Paper
Real exchange rate fluctuations and the dynamics of retail trade industries on the U.S.-Canada border
Consumers living near the U.S.-Canada border can shift their expenditures between the two countries, so real exchange rate fluctuations can act as demand shocks to border areas' retailers. Using annual county-level data, we estimate the effects of real exchange rates on the number of establishments and their average employment in border counties for four retail industries. In three of the four industries we consider, the number of operating establishments responds either contemporaneously or with a lag of one year, so long-run changes in net entry in fact occur quickly enough to matter for ...
Working Paper
The dynamics of work and debt
This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovement between the household's debt, the stock of durable goods and labor supply following wage or interest rate shocks---as the household's labor supply adjusts to finance down payments on new durable ...
Working Paper
Open Mouth Operations
We examine the standard New Keynesian economy?s Ramsey problem written in terms of instrument settings instead of allocations. Its standard formulation makes two instruments available: the path of current and future interest rates, and an ?open mouth operation? which selects one of the many equilibria consistent with the chosen interest rates. Removing the open mouth operation by imposing a finite commitment horizon yields pathological policy advice that relies on the model's forward guidance puzzle.