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Working Paper
Economic Uncertainty before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic
We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the United States and the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business growth, and disagreement among professional forecasters about future gross domestic product growth. Three results emerge. First, all indicators show huge uncertainty jumps in reaction to the pandemic and its economic fallout. Indeed, most indicators reach their highest values on record. Second, peak ...
Journal Article
The credit crunch of 2007-2008: a discussion of the background, market reactions, and policy responses
This paper discusses the events surrounding the 2007-08 credit crunch. It highlights the period of exceptional macrostability, the global savings glut, and financial innovation in mortgage-backed securities as the precursors to the crisis. The credit crunch itself occurred when house prices fell and subprime mortgage defaults increased. These events caused investors to reappraise the risks of high-yielding securities, bank failures, and sharp increases in the spreads on funds in interbank markets. The paper evaluates the actions of the authorities that provided liquidity to the markets and ...
Working Paper
Firm Data on AI
We present the first representative international data on firm-level AI use. We survey almost 6,000 CFOs, CEOs, and executives from stratified firm samples across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. We find four key facts. First, around 70 percent of firms actively use AI, particularly younger, more productive firms. Second, while over two-thirds of top executives regularly use AI, their average use is only 1.5 hours a week, with one quarter reporting no AI use. Third, firms report little impact of AI over the last three years, with more than 80 percent of firms reporting no impact on either ...