Search Results
Working Paper
Last-in first-out oligopoly dynamics
This paper extends the static analysis of oligopoly structure into an infinite- horizon setting with sunk costs and demand uncertainty. The observation that exit rates decline with firm age motivates the assumption of last-in first- out dynamics: An entrant expects to produce no longer than any incumbent. This selects an essentially unique Markov-perfect equilibrium. With mild restrictions on the demand shocks, a sequence of thresholds describes firms? equilibrium entry and survival decisions. Bresnahan and Reiss?s (1993) empirical analysis of oligopolists? entry and exit assumes that such ...
Journal Article
The Macroeconomic Effects of the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act
The 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act raised government spending caps by $300 billion for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. While spending does not increase immediately, private sector investment and consumption may respond ahead of an anticipated fiscal stimulus. This Economic Perspectives article assesses the strength of this mechanism based on the private sector?s expectations.
Conference Paper
The macroeconomic transition to high household debt
Aggressive deregulation of the household debt market in the early 1980s triggered innovations that greatly reduced the required home equity of U.S. households, allowing them to cash-out a large part of accumulated equity. In 1982, home equity equaled 71 percent of GDP; so this generated a borrowing shock of huge macroeconomic proportions. The combination of increasing household debt from 43 to 56 percent of GDP with high interest rates during the 1982-1990 period is consistent with such a shock to households? demand for funds. This paper uses a quantitative general equilibrium model of ...
Working Paper
Real exchange rate fluctuations and the dynamics of retail trade industries on the U.S.-Canada border
Consumers living near the U.S.-Canada border can shift their expenditures between the two countries, so real exchange rate fluctuations can act as demand shocks to border areas' retailers. Using annual county-level data, we estimate the effects of real exchange rates on the number of establishments and their average employment in border counties for four retail industries. In three of the four industries we consider, the number of operating establishments responds either contemporaneously or with a lag of one year, so long-run changes in net entry in fact occur quickly enough to matter for ...
Working Paper
The dynamics of work and debt
This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovement between the household's debt, the stock of durable goods and labor supply following wage or interest rate shocks---as the household's labor supply adjusts to finance down payments on new durable ...
Working Paper
Open Mouth Operations
We examine the standard New Keynesian economy?s Ramsey problem written in terms of instrument settings instead of allocations. Its standard formulation makes two instruments available: the path of current and future interest rates, and an ?open mouth operation? which selects one of the many equilibria consistent with the chosen interest rates. Removing the open mouth operation by imposing a finite commitment horizon yields pathological policy advice that relies on the model's forward guidance puzzle.
Working Paper
Macroeconomic effects of Federal Reserve forward guidance
A large output gap accompanied by stable inflation close to its target calls for further monetary accommodation, but the zero lower bound on interest rates has robbed the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the usual tool for its provision. We examine how public statements of FOMC intentions?forward guidance?can substitute for lower rates at the zero bound. We distinguish between Odyssean forward guidance, which publicly commits the FOMC to a future action, and Delphic forward guidance, which merely forecasts macroeconomic performance and likely monetary policy actions. Others have shown ...
Working Paper
The Chicago Fed DSGE model
The Chicago Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used for policy analysis and forecasting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. This article describes its specification and estimation, its dynamic characteristics and how it is used to forecast the US economy. In many respects the model resembles other medium scale New Keynesian frameworks, but there are several features which distinguish it: the monetary policy rule includes forward guidance, productivity is driven by neutral and investment specific technical change, multiple price indices identify inflation and there ...
Working Paper
Liquidity constraints of the middle class
There is evidence that a household's consumption response to transitory income does not decline, and perhaps increases, with the level of financial assets it holds. That is, middle class households with assets act as if they face liquidity constraints. This paper addresses this puzzling observation with a model of impatient households that face a large recurring expenditure. In spite of impatience, they save as this expenditure draws near. The authors call such saving made in preparation for a foreseeable event at a given future date "term saving." Term saving reverses the role of assets in ...
Working Paper
Aggregate employment fluctuations with microeconomic asymmetries
We provide a simple explanation for the observation that the variance of job destruction is greater than the variance of job creation. In our model profit maximization in the presence of proportional plant-level costs of job creation and destruction implies that shrinking plants are more sensitive than growing plants to aggregate shocks. We describe circumstances in which this microeconomic asymmetry is preserved in the aggregate and show that it can account for asymmetries in the variability of job creation and destruction of the kind observed in the U.S. manufacturing sector. This is so ...