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Working Paper
Complementarity and Macroeconomic Uncertainty
Macroeconomic uncertainty—the conditional volatility of the unforecastable component of a future value of a time series—shows considerable variation in the data. A typical assumption in business cycle models is that production is Cobb-Douglas. Under that assumption, this paper shows there is usually little, if any, endogenous variation in output uncertainty, and first moment shocks have similar effects in all states of the economy. When the model departs from Cobb-Douglas production and assumes capital and labor are gross complements, first-moment shocks have state-dependent effects and ...
Wage growth still exceeds 3 percent despite slowing in business survey measures
Fed policymakers working to reduce inflation have closely monitored how fast wages have risen. National estimates put recent 12-month wage inflation at around 4–5 percent, though these measures can lag other indicators of labor market conditions. More timely wage data can be found from the five regional Federal Reserve Banks that run business surveys.
Working Paper
Mobility and Engagement Following the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak
We develop a Mobility and Engagement Index (MEI) based on a range of mobility metrics from Safegraph geolocation data, and validate the index with mobility data from Google and Unacast. We construct MEIs at the county, MSA, state and nationwide level, and link these measures to indicators of economic activity. According to our measures, the bulk of sheltering-in-place and social disengagement occurred during the week of March 15 and simultaneously across the U.S. At the national peak of the decline in mobility in early April, localities that engaged in a 10% larger decrease in mobility than ...
Journal Article
Gauging the odds of a double-dip recession amid signals and slowdowns
Public sentiment says the recession isn't over. Never mind that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the arbiter of recessions, declared that the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 officially ended in June 2009. An unrelenting pessimism constrains the recovery as consumers spend reluctantly while paying down debt, gripped by persistent fears of unemployment. The economy grew at a 2.5 percent annualized pace in the third quarter, according to the second estimate of real gross domestic product (GDP), a moderate improvement after two quarters of decelerating growth during the recovery. ...
Working Paper
Equity Regulation and U.S. Venture Capital Investment
There is a growing consensus that the long-run per capita growth rate of the U.S. economy has drifted lower since the early 2000s, consistent with a perceived slowdown in business dynamism. One factor that may have contributed to this is a downshift in venture capital investment and its failure to recover in line with stock prices, as pre-2003 patterns would suggest. Critics have argued that this is associated with the increased regulatory burden for publically traded firms to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). There is inconclusive evidence of SOX deterring firms from becoming ...
Young workers’ employment drops in occupations with high AI exposure
In recent years, unemployment has gradually ticked up, and job searchers report increased difficulty finding new work. Is this related to AI?
Nominal GDP Outlook Suggests It's Time to End Monetary Accommodation
We argue that the policy response to COVID-19 has been broadly on track to date but that continued monetary accommodation (lowering interest rates or purchasing assets) risks fueling excessive inflation.
U.S. Likely Didn’t Slip into Recession in Early 2022 Despite Negative GDP Growth
Most indicators—particularly those measuring labor markets—provide strong evidence that the U.S. economy did not fall into a recession in the first quarter.
Initial Unemployment Claims Appear Stable over Past Several Months
It is likely that the latest rise in initial claims reflects difficulty adjusting the data for seasonal patterns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than a deterioration in underlying economic conditions.
Rising unemployment does not mean recession is inevitable
The sort of increase seen in the U.S. unemployment rate over the past year is an oft-noted predictor of recession. Yet, forecasters currently expect only a modest increase in unemployment with no recession. Is this a reasonable expectation, and if so, how is this unemployment episode different from others?