Search Results
Working Paper
A Model of Charles Ponzi
We develop a model of Ponzi schemes with asymmetric information to study Ponzi frauds. A long-lived agent offers to save on behalf of short-lived agents at a higher rate than they can earn themselves. The long-lived agent may genuinely have a superior savings technology, but may be an imposter trying to steal from short-lived agents. The model identifies when a Ponzi fraud can occur and what interventions can prevent it. A key feature of Ponzi frauds is that the long-lived agent builds trust over time and improves their reputation by keeping the scheme going.
Journal Article
Bridging Between Policymakers’ and Economists’ Views on Bubbles
Senior economist Gadi Barlevy examines the gap between policymakers and researchers when it comes to asset bubbles. He describes policymakers? key questions about asset bubbles and asks how economic models might be used to shed light on them.
Journal Article
Evaluating the role of labor market mismatch in rising unemployment
Recent labor market trends have raised concerns that the unemployment rate is high not because employers are reluctant to hire but because they are unable to hire. These concerns, if true, would cast doubt on using monetary policy to stimulate the labor market, since it works by encouraging firms to hire more. Using a matching function approach, the author finds that a shock that makes it more difficult for firms to hire qualified applicants would by itself imply an unemployment rate of no more than 7.1 percent, much below the actual unemployment rate during the past two years. Hence, the ...
Journal Article
The cost of business cycles and the benefits of stabilization
This article reviews the social cost of U.S. postwar business cycle fluctuations, first calculated by Lucas (1987). Recent work suggests this cost is considerably larger than suggested by Lucas. Despite this, the author argues that it is not obvious that policymakers should have pursued a more aggressive stabilization policy over the postwar period. Still, because volatility is costly, stable growth remains a desirable goal.
Journal Article
Policymaking under uncertainty: Gradualism and robustness
Some economists have recommended the robust control approach to the formulation of monetary policy under uncertainty when policymakers cannot attach probabilities to the scenarios that concern them. One critique of this approach is that it seems to imply aggressive policies under uncertainty, contrary to the conventional wisdom of acting more gradually in an uncertain environment. This article argues that aggressiveness is not a generic feature of robust control.
Journal Article
Economic theory and asset bubbles
The author summarizes what economic theory tells us about when asset price bubbles can occur and what the welfare implications are from bursting them. In some cases, bursting a bubble may make society worse off by exacerbating the market distortions that give rise to the bubble in the first place.
Journal Article
Bubbles and Fools
This article reviews the literature on greater-fool theories of bubbles, which argue that bubbles can arise if traders are willing to buy assets they know to be overvalued because they hope to later sell them at a profit to others. The author discusses two approaches that attempt to model this phenomenon and what these approaches imply for economic policy.
Newsletter
Why don't recessions encourage more R&D spending?
Economists sometimes argue that recessions promote activities that ultimately contribute to long-run growth. But evidence suggests research and development, one important source of economic growth, falls rather than rises during recessions, even for firms that do not appear to be credit constrained. The author discusses an alternative explanation for this pattern.
Newsletter
Interest-Only Mortgages and Speculation in Hot Housing Markets
Even as housing markets have temporarily shut down across the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic, housing remains a key sector that contributes disproportionately to fluctuations in overall economic activity and that will likely play an important role as the economy reopens. Interest in this market among research economists and policymakers intensified after the exceptional boom and bust in housing between 2003 and 2008. In this Chicago Fed Letter, we describe research in Barlevy and Fisher (2020)1 that examined patterns in the kinds of mortgages homebuyers took out in different cities during ...
Newsletter
Interest-only mortgages and speculation in hot housing markets
Even as housing markets have temporarily shut down across the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic, housing remains a key sector that contributes disproportionately to fluctuations in overall economic activity and that will likely play an important role as the economy reopens. Interest in this market among research economists and policymakers intensified after the exceptional boom and bust in housing between 2003 and 2008. In this Chicago Fed Letter, we describe research in Barlevy and Fisher (2020)1 that examined patterns in the kinds of mortgages homebuyers took out in different cities during ...