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Briefing
Are depression-era employment swings overstated?
The rapid fall in unemployment after the Great Depression suggests that there is nothing inherently persistent in a high unemployment rate. But a closer examination of the data indicates that changes in the unemployment rate might not have been as pronounced as generally believed.
Journal Article
Characterizing the Unusual Path of U.S. Output During and After the Great Recession
In this article, we examine the extent to which U.S. per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been uncharacteristically slow in the recovery from the 2007--09 recession and investigate whether this tepid growth might be a short- or longer-term phenomenon. We first examine several conventional univariate time series representations of per capita GDP and use these to assess the most recent recession and recovery in relation to its previous behavior over the U.S. postwar period. We then present a decomposition of per capita GDP into three components---each of which tends to fluctuate ...
Working Paper
Real Rates and Consumption Smoothing in a Low Interest Rate Environment: The Case of Japan
We study the dynamics of consumption, the real interest rate, and measures of labor input in Japan over the period from 1985-2014. We identify structural breaks in macroeconomic aggregates during the 1990s and associate them with the zero interest rate policy pursued by the Bank of Japan and the surprise increase in the consumption tax rate in April 1997. Formal estimation using the Generalized Methods of Moments shows that the mid-1990s are characterized by breaks in the structural parameters governing household consumption and labor supply decisions. Specifically, following the tax hike and ...