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Journal Article
Reconciling Recent Strong Output Growth with Rising Unemployment
Over the last three years, robust GDP growth alongside comparatively weak labor market data on jobs and unemployment has presented a puzzle to policymakers and analysts. This disconnect shows up as elevated labor productivity growth and an unemployment rate that has risen despite robust GDP growth, violating the usual inverse relationship known as Okun’s law. We show that these data may be less puzzling than they appear. Historical revision patterns provide no evidence that recent productivity gains will be revised away. And once we account for lagged effects, the comovements of recent GDP ...
Journal Article
Examining the Beliefs of Professional Forecasters
This Economic Commentary studies how professional forecasters update their forecasts in response to macroeconomic news. We find that the two most important news releases for how professionals update their short-term forecasts are the unemployment rate and the three-month Treasury bill rate. News about the unemployment rate is particularly important when updating forecasts about real GDP growth or unemployment, whereas news about the short-term Treasury bill rate tends to be more informative for revisions of inflation and three-month Treasury bill rate forecasts.
Journal Article
Advance Layoff Notice Provision and the WARN Act
We find that the incidence of advance layoff notice more than doubled in the years following the passage of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. Geographic variation confirms that the act was likely responsible for this increase. We also find that state-level mini-WARN Acts that increased notification coverage had no discernible effect on the incidence of advance notice in these states. But the mini-WARN Act in New York that increased the required length of notice resulted in a commensurate increase in advance notice for affected workers.