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Keywords:inequality 

Report
Business cycle fluctuations and the distribution of consumption

This paper sheds new light on the interactions between business cycles and the consumption distribution. We use Consumer Expenditure Survey data and a factor model to characterize the cyclical dynamics of the consumption distribution. We first establish that our approach is able to closely match business cycle fluctuations of consumption from the National Account. We then study the responses of the consumption distribution to total factor productivity shocks and economic policy uncertainty shocks. Importantly, we find that the responses of the right tail of the consumption distribution, ...
Staff Reports , Paper 716

Working Paper
Trends in poverty and inequality among Hispanics

Since the 1970s, the poverty rate has remained largely unchanged among Hispanics but has declined among non-Hispanic whites and blacks, particularly before the onset of the recent recession. The influx of large numbers of immigrants partially explains why poverty rates have not fallen over time among Hispanics> ; In 2009, Hispanics were more than twice as likely to be poor than non-Hispanic whites. Lower average English ability, low levels of educational attainment, part-time employment, the youthfulness of Hispanic household heads, and the 2007?09 recession are important factors that have ...
Working Papers , Paper 1109

Working Paper
Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World

We study climate policy in an economy with heterogeneous households, two types of goods (clean and dirty), and a climate externality from the dirty good. Using household expenditure and emissions data, we document that low-income households have higher emissions per dollar spent than high-income households, making a flat carbon tax regressive. We build a model that captures this fact and study climate policies that are neutral with respect to the income distribution. We show that the constrained optimal carbon tax in a heterogeneous economy is heterogeneous: Higher-income households face a ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 427

Working Paper
Achievement Gap Estimates and Deviations from Cardinal Comparability

This paper assesses the sensitivity of standard empirical methods for measuring group differences in achievement to violations in the cardinal comparability of achievement test scores. The paper defines a distance measure over possible weighting functions (scalings) of test scores. It then constructs worst-case bounds for the bias in the estimated achievement gap (or achievement gap change) that could result from using the observed rather than the true test scale, given that the true and observed scales are no more than a fixed distance from each other. The worst-case weighting functions have ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2015-40

Working Paper
Heterogeneous Agents Dynamic Spatial General Equilibrium

I develop a dynamic model of migration and labor market choice with incomplete markets and uninsurable income risk to quantify the effects of international trade on workers’ employment reallocation, earnings, and wealth. Macroeconomic conditions in different labor markets and idiosyncratic shocks shape agents’ labor market choices, consumption, earnings, and asset accumulation over time. Despite the rich heterogeneity, the model is highly tractable as the optimal consumption, labor supply, capital accumulation, and migration and reallocation decisions of individual workers across ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-005

Working Paper
Inequality in the Time of COVID-19: Evidence from Mortgage Delinquency and Forbearance

Using a novel database that combines mortgage servicing records, credit-bureau data, and loan application information, we show that lower-income and minority borrowers have significantly higher nonpayment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, even after controlling for conventional risk factors. A difference-in-differences analysis shows how much the pandemic has exacerbated income and racial inequalities. We then find that government and private-sector forbearance programs have mitigated these inequalities in the near term, as lower-income and minority borrowers have taken up the short-term ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-09

Report
The Limited Role of Intergenerational Transfers for Understanding Racial Wealth Disparities

Transfers of wealth between generations—whether through inheritances or inter vivos gifts—are less important in explaining racial disparities in wealth than might be expected. While this factor looms large in the media’s discussions of racial inequality, it explains relatively little of the disparities evident in the data. One reason is that most people, regardless of race, receive no inheritance or other transfer of substantial value. In addition, most recipients of inheritances ultimately consume those bequests and do not plan to leave substantial gifts to their offspring. Further, ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Working Paper
The Pathway to Enrolling in a High-Performance High School: Understanding Barriers to Access

In 2017, Chicago Public Schools adopted an online universal application system for all high schools with the hope of providing more equitable access to high-performance schools. Despite the new system, Black students and students living in low-socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods remained less likely than their peers to enroll in a high-performance high school. In this paper, we characterize various constraints that students and families may face in enrolling in a high-performance high school including eligibility to programs based on prior academic achievement, distance from ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2020-32

Discussion Paper
Who Benefited from PPP Loans by Fintech Lenders?

In the previous post, we discussed inequalities in access to credit from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), showing that, although fintech lenders had a small share of total PPP loan volumes, they provided important support for underserved borrowers. In this post, we ask whether smaller firms received the amount of PPP credit that they requested, and whether loans went to the hardest-hit areas and mitigated job losses. Our results indicate that fintech providers were a key channel in reaching minority-owned firms, the smallest of small businesses, and borrowers most affected by the ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20210527c

Discussion Paper
Why Cash Transfers Are Good Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an exceptionally large and negative impact on economic activity around the world. We show that cash transfers can be a useful policy tool during a pandemic. Cash transfers mitigate consumption inequality induced by the pandemic and provide incentives to individuals who are most negatively affected by lockdown policies to adhere to them.
Policy Hub , Paper 2020-4

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