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Firms Start with Fewer Employees over Last 25 Years
The average new firm that is less than a year old had 20% fewer workers in 2019 than it did in 1994.
Journal Article
The Impact of Automation on Inequality
Occupations with large employment and low income have a higher automation probability.
Journal Article
Mapping the U.S. Production Network: Identifying Hub Industries
Identifying key suppliers and buyers could help identify the cause of certain economic downturns.
Journal Article
60% of District's Jobs Could Face Automation in the Next 20 Years
Jobs in the St. Louis Fed?s District face a higher risk of automation than do jobs nation-wide. Smaller MSAs in the District will face bigger impact.
What Are the Fed’s Dollar Swap Lines and FIMA Repos, and Why Do They Matter?
Making it easier for central banks to access U.S. dollars helps calm exchange rate volatility and allow markets and credit lines to operate smoothly.
Journal Article
Industry Connectivity: A Case Study of the Construction Industry
Industries most related to the construction industry were hit harder by the Great Recession.
Working Paper
Capital Gains Taxation and Investment Dynamics
This paper quanti?es the long-run effects of reducing capital gains taxes on aggregate investment. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous ?rms, which face discrete capital gains tax rates based on their ?rm size. We calibrate our model by targeting relevant micro moments as well as the difference-in-differences estimate of the capital elasticity based on the institutional setting and a policy reform in Korea. We ?nd that the ?rm-size reform that reduced the capital gains tax rates from 24 percent to 10 percent for the affected ?rms increased aggregate investment by ...
Working Paper
Customer Capital, Markup Cyclicality, and Amplification
This paper studies the importance of firm-level price markup dynamics for business cycle fluctuations. Using state-of-the-art IO techniques to measure the behavior of markups over the business cycle at the firm level, I find that markups are countercyclical with an average elasticity of -1.1 with respect to real GDP. Importantly, I find substantial heterogeneity in markup cyclicality across firms, with small firms having significantly more counter-cyclical markups than large firms. Then, I develop a general equilibrium model by embedding customer capital (due to deep habits as in Ravn, ...
Working Paper
Markup Cyclicality: A Tale of Two Models
Many models in the business cycle literature generate counter-cyclical price markups. This paper examines if the prominent models in the literature are consistent with the empirical findings of micro-level markup behavior in Hong (2016). In particular, I test the markup behavior of the following two models: (i) an oligopolistic competition model, and (ii) a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous price stickiness. First, I explore the Atkeson and Burstein (2008) model of oligopolistic competition, in which markups are an increasing function of firm market shares. Coupled with an exogenous ...
Journal Article
The Global Decline of the Natural Rate of Interest and Implications for Monetary Policy
A low natural rate of interest in normal times may call for unconventional policy in recessions.