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Working Paper
The Credit Card Spending Channel of Monetary Policy: Micro Evidence from Account-level Data
Monetary policy impacts consumer spending via the effect of interest rate changes on credit card borrowing. Using supervisory account-level spending and balance data, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in the interest rate reduces credit card spending by nearly 9 percent and revolving balances by close to 4 percent. Aggregate results are primarily driven by revolving accounts, while we estimate small and statistically insignificant interest-rate elasticity for transaction accounts. Consistent with financial constraints, low-credit-score accounts tend to adjust spending, while ...
Discussion Paper
Spending Down Pandemic Savings Is an “Only-in-the-U.S.” Phenomenon
Household saving soared in the United States and other high-income economies during the pandemic, as consumers cut back on spending while government policies supported incomes. More recently, saving behavior has diverged, with the U.S. saving rate dropping below its pre-pandemic average while saving rates elsewhere have remained above their pre-pandemic averages. As a result, U.S. consumers have been spending down the “excess savings” built up during the pandemic while the excess savings abroad remain untapped. This divergent behavior helps explain why U.S. GDP has returned to its ...
Speech
Perspectives on the U.S. Economic Outlook
My view is that the economy is currently in a good place. Labor markets are strong, inflation is moving to target, and growth is likely to be somewhat above potential. Particularly given the recent cuts in the federal funds rate, and the fact that monetary actions take effect with some lag, I would say that this is a good time to patiently assess the economy. In the short run, I do not see a need for additional policy easing unless there is a material change to the forecast.
Discussion Paper
Racial and Income Gaps in Consumer Spending following COVID-19
This post is the first in a two-part series that seeks to understand whether consumer spending patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic evolved differentially across counties by race and income. As the pandemic hit and social distancing restrictions were put into place in March 2020, consumer spending plummeted. Subsequently, as social distancing restrictions began to be relaxed later in spring 2020, consumer spending started to rebound. We find that higher-income counties had a considerably steeper decline and a shallower recovery than low-income counties did. The differences by race were also ...
Discussion Paper
How Much Have Consumers Spent on Imports during the Pandemic?
The return of U.S. real GDP to its pre-pandemic level in the second quarter of this year was driven by consumer spending on goods. Such spending was well above its pre-pandemic path, while spending on services was well below. Despite the surge in goods spending, domestic manufacturing has increased only modestly, leaving most of the increase in demand being filled by imports. While higher imports have been a drag on growth, the size of this drag has been moderated by the value created by the domestic transportation, wholesale, and retail sectors in selling these goods. Going forward, a ...
Working Paper
Tracking U.S. Consumers in Real Time with a New Weekly Index of Retail Trade
We create a new weekly index of retail trade that accurately predicts the U.S. Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS). The index's weekly frequency provides an early snapshot of the MRTS and allows for a more granular analysis of the aggregate consumer response to fast-moving events such as the Covid-19 pandemic. To construct the index, we extract the co-movement in weekly data series capturing credit and debit card transactions, mobility, gasoline sales, and consumer sentiment. To ensure that the index is representative of aggregate retail spending, we implement a novel ...
Does Spending Slide When COVID-19 Surges?
In this District Data Brief, we show that state-level data suggest that economic implications from the latest wave have been less than those from the fall 2020 wave. While there has been some consumer response to the delta-variant-driven COVID-19 surge, it has been weaker than the response to the fall 2020 COVID-19 surge.
Working Paper
Government Transfers and Consumer Spending among Households with Children during COVID-19
Leveraging novel data on consumer credit and debit card spending by Zip code, this study examines how the impact of government transfers on economic well-being varied by household type during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that pandemic transfers disproportionately benefited households with children, buffering them from earnings losses at the pandemic’s start and sustaining spending growth over time. Household essential spending increased proportionally with the delivery of cash transfers, while discretionary spending was influenced more by pandemic-specific factors beyond ...
Discussion Paper
A New Dataset for Consumer Spending in the New York Fed EHIs
We are enhancing our set of Economic Heterogeneity Indicators (EHIs) by adding a set of metrics on consumer spending with data presented by income, education, race and ethnicity, age, and urban status. The data will help track the evolution of aggregate behavior by analyzing the spending of specific groups in a more timely manner than is possible using public surveys.
Report
How Interest Rate Changes Affect Credit Card Spending
The response of credit card spending to interest rate changes has significant implications for how monetary policy affects consumer spending and therefore the broader economy because credit cards have become a dominant payment method in the United States. However, the aggregate effect masks important differences across types of cardholders. As the authors show, the impact of interest rate changes on individual consumers depends critically on whether they carry a balance on their card, and it depends on their credit score, indicating that different segments of the population respond ...