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Working Paper
Institutional quality, the cyclicality of monetary policy and macroeconomic volatility
In contrast to industrialized countries, emerging market economies are characterized by proor acyclical monetary policies and high output volatility. This paper argues that those facts can be related to a long-run feature of the economy - namely, its institutional quality (IQL). The paper presents evidence that supports the link between an index of IQL (law and order, government stability, investment profile, etc.), and (i) the cyclicality of monetary policy, and (ii) the volatilities of output and the nominal interest rate. In a DSGE model, foreign investors that choose a portfolio of direct ...
Working Paper
How Much has Wealth Concentration Grown in the United States? A Re-Examination of Data from 2001-2013
Well known research based on capitalized income tax data shows robust growth in wealth concentration in the late 2000s. We show that these robust growth estimates rely on an assumption---homogeneous rates of return across the wealth distribution---that is not supported by data. When the capitalization model incorporates heterogeneous rates of return (on just interest-bearing assets), wealth concentration estimates in 2011 fall from 40.5% to 33.9%. These estimates are consistent in levels and trend with other micro wealth data and show that wealth concentration increases until the Great ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Policy during a Pandemic
I study the effects of the 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak in the United States and subsequent fiscal policy response in a nonlinear DSGE model. The pandemic is a shock to the utility of contact-intensive services that propagates to other sectors via general equilibrium, triggering a deep recession. I use a calibrated version of the model to analyze different types of fiscal policies. I find that UI benefits are the most effective tool to stabilize income for borrowers, who are the hardest hit, while savers may favor unconditional transfers. Liquidity assistance programs are effective if the ...
Working Paper
Monetary Tightening, Inflation Drivers and Financial Stress
The paper explores the state–dependent effects of a monetary tightening on financial stress, focusing on a novel dimension: the nature of supply versus demand inflation at the time of policy rate hikes. We use local projections to estimate the effect of high frequency identified monetary policy surprises on a variety of financial stress measures, differentiating the effects based on whether inflation is supply–driven (e.g. due to adverse supply or cost–push shocks) or demand–driven (e.g. due to positive demand factors). We find that financial stress flares up after a policy rate hike ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Dominance and US Monetary: 1940–1975
This narrative investigates the frictions that existed between the Federal Reserve?s monetary policies and the US Treasury?s debt-management operations from the onset of the Second World War through the end of the Federal Reserve?s even-keel actions in mid-1975. The analysis suggests that three factors can help explain why the Federal Reserve compromised the attainment of its statutorily mandated monetary-policy objectives for debt-management reasons: 1) the existence of an existential threat, 2) the fear that to do otherwise would create instability in the banking sector, and 3) the ...
Report
Pandemic-Era Inflation Drivers and Global Spillovers
We estimate a multi-country, multi-sector New Keynesian model to quantify the drivers of domestic inflation during 2020–23 in several countries, including the United States. The model matches observed inflation together with sector-level prices and wages. We further measure the relative importance of different types of shocks on inflation across countries over time. The key mechanism, the international transmission of demand, supply and energy shocks through global linkages helps us to match the behavior of the USD/EUR exchange rate. The quantification exercise yields four key findings. ...
Working Paper
Sharing the burden: monetary and fiscal responses to a world liquidity trap
With integrated trade and financial markets, a collapse in aggregate demand in a large country can cause "natural real interest rates" to fall below zero in all countries, giving rise to a global "liquidity trap." This paper explores the optimal policy response to this type of shock, when governments cooperate on both fiscal and monetary policy. Adjusting to a large negative demand shock requires raising world aggregate demand, as well as redirecting demand towards the source (home) country. ; The key feature of demand shocks in a liquidity trap is that relative prices respond perversely. ...
Report
Money in the Production Function
Businesses hold large quantities of cash reserves, which have average returns well below their investments in tangible capital. Businesses do this because these monetary assets provide services. One implication is that money services is a factor of production in capital theoretic valuation equilibrium models. Our aggregate production function is consistent with both the classical demand for money function relationship and with extended periods of near zero short-term nominal interest rates. In our model economy, there is a 100 percent reserve requirement on all demand deposits. Demand ...
Journal Article
Is It Time for Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic?
Sargent and Wallace (1981) published "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic" 40 years ago. Their central message was that a central bank may not have the power to determine the long-run rate of inflation without fiscal support. In a policy regime where the fiscal authority is non-Ricardian, an attempt on the part of the central bank to lower inflation may end up backfiring. I develop a structural model to illustrate this result through the use of a diagram. In addition, I use the model to explain how low inflation, low interest rates, and high primary budget deficits can coexist. I also use ...
Working Paper
Credit and Liquidity Policies during Large Crises
We compare firms’ financials during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. While the two crises featured similar increases in credit spreads, debt and liquid assets decreased during the GFC but increased during COVID-19. In the cross-section, leverage was the primary determinant of credit spreads and investment during the GFC, but liquidity was more important during COVID-19. We augment a quantitative model of firm capital structure with a motive to hold liquid assets. The GFC resembled a combination of real and financial shocks, while COVID-19 also featured liquidity shocks. We ...