Search Results

(refine search)

SORT BY: PREVIOUS / NEXT

All:
Title:
Author:
Abstract:
Keywords:

+ Add Search Parameter

Report
How Did the MSLP Borrowers Fare Before and During COVID-19?
Qing, Melanie; Ballance, Joshua; Wang, J. Christina (2021-09-08)
This policy brief uses Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) data to assess whether the Main Street Lending Program (MSLP) borrowers were in worse financial health than their peers before COVID-19 hit the economy hard in March 2020 or suffered worse deterioration afterward. The findings can help us better understand why these firms sought to obtain MSLP loans. We find that MSLP borrowers tend to be larger than their peer firms (that is, firms in the same industry and state). Within the same size group, MSLP borrowers are on average younger than their peers. Borrowers tended to have a slightly higher ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Report
Debt, Deficits, and Interest Rates
Cotton, Christopher D. (2021-12-23)
This paper identifies how a rise in the deficit/debt impacts interest rates by looking at the high-frequency response of interest rates to fiscal surprises. The fiscal surprises are the unexpected components of deficit releases and the changes in official forecasts by the Congressional Budget Office and by the Office of Management and Budget. The paper estimates that a rise in the deficit-to-GDP ratio of 1 percentage point raises the 10-year nominal rate by 8.1 basis points. This is quantitatively similar for other Treasury maturities and for corporate debt interest rates. The paper also ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Working Paper
Saving for a rainy day: estimating the appropriate size of U.S. state budget stabilization funds
Zhao, Bo (2014-10-01)
Rainy day funds (RDFs) are potentially an important countercyclical tool for states to stabilize their budgets and the overall economy during economic downturns. However, U.S. states have often found themselves exhausting their RDFs and having to raise tax rates or reduce expenditures while still experiencing a downturn. Therefore, how much each state should save in its RDF has become an increasingly important policy question. To address this issue, this paper applies several new methodologies to develop target RDF levels for each U.S. state, based on the estimated short-term revenue ...
Working Papers , Paper 14-12

Working Paper
Fiscal Expansions in the Era of Low Real Interest Rates
Garga, Vaishali (2020-04-01)
Low natural real interest rates limit the power of monetary policy to revive the economy due to the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. Fiscal stabilization via higher government debt is frequently recommended as a policy to raise the natural real interest rate. This paper builds a non-Ricardian framework to study the tradeoffs associated with a debt-financed fiscal expansion and show that even in a low real interest rate environment, higher debt doesn’t necessarily raise the real interest rate. The effect of the expansion is non-monotonic: Increasing debt raises the ...
Working Papers , Paper 20-11

Working Paper
Government Debt Limits and Stabilization Policy
Murphy, Daniel; Young, Eric (2020-07-31)
We evaluate alternative public debt management policies in light of constraints imposed by the effective lower bound on interest rates. Replacing the current limit on gross debt issued by the fiscal authority with a limit on consolidated debt of the government can ensure that output always reaches its potential, but it may permit excess government spending when the economy is away from the effective lower bound. The welfare-maximizing policy sets the gross debt limit to the level implied by Samuelson (1954), while the central bank finances government spending with money when the economy is at ...
Working Papers , Paper 20-23

Working Paper
The Welfare Costs of Business Cycles Unveiled: Measuring the Extent of Stabilization Policies
Barros, Fernando; Luduvice, André; Gomes, Fabio (2022-04-21)
How can we measure the welfare benefit of ongoing stabilization policies? We develop a methodology to calculate the welfare cost of business cycles taking into account that observed consumption is partially smoothed. We propose a decomposition that disentangles consumption in a mix of laissez-faire (absent policies) and riskless components. With a novel identification strategy, we estimate the span of stabilization power. Our results show that the welfare cost of total fluctuations is 11 percent of lifetime consumption, of which 82 percent is smoothed by the status quo policies, yielding a ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-14r

Working Paper
The Welfare Costs of Business Cycles Unveiled: Measuring the Extent of Stabilization Policies
Barros, Fernando; Luduvice, André; Gomes, Fabio (2023-03-02)
How can we measure the welfare benefit of ongoing stabilization policies? We develop a methodology to calculate the welfare cost of business cycles taking into account that observed consumption is partially smoothed. We propose a decomposition that disentangles consumption in a mix of laissez-faire (absent policies) and riskless components. With a novel identification strategy, we estimate the span of stabilization power. In our preferred specification, we find that the welfare cost of total fluctuations is 11 percent of lifetime consumption, of which 82 percent is smoothed by the status quo ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-14R2

Working Paper
The Welfare Costs of Business Cycles Unveiled: Measuring the Extent of Stabilization Policies
Barros, Fernando; Luduvice, André; Gomes, Fabio (2021-07-30)
How can we measure the welfare benefit of ongoing stabilization? We develop a methodology to calculate the welfare cost of business cycles taking into account that observed consumption is partially smoothed. We propose a decomposition that disentangles consumption in a mix of laissez-faire (absent policies) and riskless components. With a novel identification strategy, we estimate the span of stabilization power. Our results show that the welfare cost of total fluctuations is 5.81 percent of lifetime consumption, in which 80 percent is smoothed by the status quo, yielding a residual 1.05 ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-14

Working Paper
Optimal monetary and fiscal policy at the zero lower bound in a small open economy
Egorov, Konstantin; Bhattarai, Saroj (2016-01-01)
We investigate open economy dimensions of optimal monetary and fiscal policy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) in a small open economy model. At positive interest rates, the trade elasticity has negligible effects on optimal policy. In contrast, at the ZLB, the trade elasticity plays a key role in optimal policy prescriptions. The way in which the trade elasticity shapes policy depends on the government's ability to commit. Under discretion, the increase in government spending at the ZLB depends critically on the trade elasticity. Under commitment, the difference between future and current ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 260

Working Paper
Inflation dynamics: the role of public debt and policy regimes
Bhattarai, Saroj; Park, Woong Yong; Lee, Jae Won (2012)
We investigate the roles of a time-varying inflation target and monetary and fiscal policy stances on the dynamics of inflation in a DSGE model. Under an active monetary and passive fiscal policy regime, inflation closely follows the path of the inflation target and a stronger reaction of monetary policy to inflation decreases the equilibrium response of inflation to non-policy shocks. In sharp contrast, under an active fiscal and passive monetary policy regime, inflation moves in an opposite direction from the inflation target and a stronger reaction of monetary policy to inflation increases ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 124

show more (66)

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Fed in Print

Search Results

FILTER BY YEAR

FILTER BY BANK

FILTER BY SERIES

FILTER BY CONTENT TYPE

FILTER BY AUTHOR

FILTER BY JEL CLASSIFICATION