Search Results
Working Paper
Clustered Housing Cycles
Using a panel of U.S. city-level building permits data, we estimate a Markov-switching model of housing cycles that allows for idiosyncratic departures from a national housing cycle. These departures occur for clusters of cities that experience simultaneous housing contractions. We find that cities do not form housing regions in the traditional geographic sense. Instead, similarities in factors affecting the demand for housing (such as average winter temperature and the unemployment rate) appear to be more important determinants of cyclical comovements than similarities in factors affecting ...
Working Paper
A State-Level Analysis of Okun’s Law
Okun?s law is an empirical relationship that measures the correlation between the deviation of the unemployment rate from its natural rate and the deviation of output growth from its potential. In this paper, we estimate Okun?s coefficients for each U.S. state and examine the potential factors that explain the heterogeneity of the estimated Okun relationships. We find that indicators of more flexible labor markets (higher levels of education achievement in the population, lower rate of unionization, and a higher share of nonmanufacturing employment) are important determinants of the ...
Working Paper
Tax Progressivity, Economic Booms and Trickle-Up Economics
We propose a method to decompose changes in the tax structure into orthogonal components measuring the level and progressivity of taxes. Similar to tax shocks found in the existing empirical literature, the level shock is contractionary. The tax progressivity shock is expansionary: Increasing tax progressivity raises (lowers) disposable income at the bottom (top) end of the income distribution by shifting the tax burden from the bottom to the top. If agents’ marginal propensity to consume falls with income, the rise in consumption at the bottom more than compensates for the decline in ...
Working Paper
A Flexible Finite-Horizon Identification of Technology Shocks
Recent empirical studies using in finite horizon long-run restrictions question the validity of the technology-driven real business cycle hypothesis. These results have met with their own controversy, stemming from their sensitivity to changes in model specification and the general poor performance of long-run restrictions in Monte Carlo experiments. We propose an alternative identification that maximizes the contribution of technology shocks to the forecast-error variance of labor productivity at a long, but finite horizon. In small samples, our identification outperforms its in finite ...
Journal Article
Using Brent and WTI oil prices to predict gasoline prices
The spot prices of West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude oil recently diverged. If this divergence persists, economists and energy analysts may want to focus on Brent prices when predicting the level of gasoline prices.
Journal Article
Business cycle measures
Business cycle measures can provide timely statistical evidence of turning points.
Journal Article
Measuring Potential Output
So many ways to measure potential output, so little consensus?But different measurements don?t necessarily alter central bank policy decisions.
Journal Article
Introducing the St. Louis Fed Price Pressures Measure
Assessing inflation?s likely path matters to policymakers and those in financial markets.
Journal Article
Taking Stock: Income Inequality and the Stock Market
Financial crises affect high-income earners disproportionately because of their exposure to riskier assets.
Journal Article
Okun's law in recession and recovery
The relationship between unemployment and output growth changes during recoveries.