Search Results
Journal Article
Shipping Cost Shocks and US Producer Prices: Normal versus Crisis Pass-through
This paper examines how fluctuations in shipping costs pass through to U.S. producer prices. We link confidential shipment-level import transactions from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database (LFTTD) to confidential firm-level producer prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Producer Price Index (PPI) microdata, constructing a monthly panel of more than 6,000 U.S. manufacturing importers from 2005 to 2022. Using local projections and Bartik-style instruments based on route-level shipping-cost variation, we find that pass-through to domestic producer prices is ...
Journal Article
The Term Structure of the Excess Bond Premium: Measures and Implications
In this article, we construct daily aggregate as well as short-, medium-, and long-term "excess bond premium" (EBP) measures using a widely available corporate bond database (known as "TRACE"). The novel EBP measures we construct provide an important gauge of strains in the financial sector at different horizons. We find that the short-term EBP measure increased more dramatically at the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2007–09 global financial crisis, but the pattern was reversed around the interest rate liftoff at the end of 2015.
Journal Article
Analyzing the Efficacy of the Fed's Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility
This article analyzes the effectiveness of the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) in stabilizing the US corporate bond market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SMCCF announcements in March and April 2020 significantly reduced credit spreads across different bond maturities, restoring a more typical upward-sloping yield curve. The Federal Reserve's bond purchases, though relatively small in scale, notably decreased credit spreads for eligible bonds compared to ineligible ones. The study's model suggests that market dynamics, including a rush to sell short-term safe bonds and ...
Working Paper
Inflation dynamics during the financial crisis
Firms with limited internal liquidity significantly increased prices in 2008, while their liquidity unconstrained counterparts slashed prices. Differences in the firms' price-setting behavior were concentrated in sectors likely characterized by customer markets. The authors develop a model in which firms face financial frictions while setting prices in a customer-markets setting. Financial distortions create an incentive for firms to raise prices in response to adverse demand or financial shocks. These results reflect the firms' reaction to preserve internal liquidity and avoid accessing ...
Working Paper
Shipping Cost Shocks and US Producer Prices: Normal versus Crisis Pass-through
This paper examines how shipping costs pass through to US producer prices. We link confidential shipment-level import transactions from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database (LFTTD) to confidential firm-level producer prices from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Producer Price Index (PPI) microdata, constructing a monthly panel of more than 6,000 US manufacturing importers from 2005 to 2022. Using local projections and Bartik-style instruments based on route-level shipping-cost variation, we find that pass-through to producer prices is negligible in normal times ...
Working Paper
The Fed Takes On Corporate Credit Risk: An Analysis of the Efficacy of the SMCCF
We evaluate the efficacy of the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), a program designed to stabilize the corporate bond market in the wake of the COVID-19 shock. The Fed announced the SMCCF on March 23 and expanded the program on April 9. Regression discontinuity estimates imply that these announcements reduced credit spreads on bonds eligible for purchase 70 basis points (bp). We refine this analysis by constructing a sample of bonds—issued by the same set of companies—that differ in their SMCCF eligibility. A diff-in-diff analysis shows that both announcements had large ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Risk and Financial Risk
In this paper, we study the interplay between sovereign risk and global financial risk. We show that a substantial portion of the comovement among sovereign spreads is accounted for by changes in global financial risk. We construct bond-level sovereign spreads for dollar-denominated bonds issued by more than 50 countries from 1995 to 2020 and use various indicators to measure global financial risk. Through panel regressions and local projection analysis, we find that an increase in global financial risk causes a large and persistent widening of sovereign bond spreads. These effects are ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Risk and Financial Risk
In this paper, we study the interplay between sovereign risk and global financial risk. We show that a substantial portion of the comovement among sovereign spreads is accounted for by changes in global financial risk. We construct bond-level sovereign spreads for dollar-denominated bonds issued by more than 50 countries from 1995 to 2020 and use various indicators to measure global financial risk. Through panel regressions and local projection analysis, we find that an increase in global financial risk causes a large and persistent widening of sovereign bond spreads. These effects are ...
Report
Effects of Tariff Uncertainty on the Outlook of Small and Medium-sized Businesses
A large body of research demonstrates that uncertainty affects many dimensions of firms’ decisions, from investment and hiring to pricing and profitability. To gain a better understanding of how uncertainty induced by shifting trade policy shapes the behavior of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the authors surveyed decision-makers at SMBs. The survey, administered by Morning Consult, was conducted in three waves: in December 2024, February 2025, and late April 2025. Each wave contained a nationally representative sample of about 600 SMBs.