Search Results
Discussion Paper
The Transmission of Global Risk
Turmoil in the banking sector in the U.S. and Europe in early 2023 brought jitters to financial markets and increased concerns about a global risk-off event. Risk-off episodes—periods of increased global risk aversion—are characterized by sharp increases in credit spreads, high volatility in equity markets, and appreciation of reserve currencies
Discussion Paper
Monitoring the World Economy: A Global Conditions Index
In this note we present a Global Conditions Index (GCI), a real-time measure of the health of the global economy constructed using a small set of world economic variables.
Working Paper
Piecewise-Linear Approximations and Filtering for DSGE Models with Occasionally Binding Constraints
We develop an algorithm to construct approximate decision rules that are piecewise-linear and continuous for DSGE models with an occasionally binding constraint. The functional form of the decision rules allows us to derive a conditionally optimal particle filter (COPF) for the evaluation of the likelihood function that exploits the structure of the solution. We document the accuracy of the likelihood approximation and embed it into a particle Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm to conduct Bayesian estimation. Compared with a standard bootstrap particle filter, the COPF significantly ...
Discussion Paper
Forecasting During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Structural Analysis of Downside Risk
The global collapse in economic activity triggered by individual and policy-mandated responses to the spread of COVID-19 is unprecedented both in scale and origin. At the time of writing, U.S. GDP is expected by professional forecasters to contract a staggering 6 percent over the course of 2020 driven by its 32 percent collapse in the second quarter (measured at an annual rate).
Working Paper
Understanding Persistent Stagnation
We theoretically explore long-run stagnation at the zero lower bound in a representative agent framework. We analytically compare expectations-driven stagnation to a secular stagnation episode and find contrasting policy implications for changes in government spending, supply shocks and neo-Fisherian policies. On the other hand, a minimum wage policy is expansionary and robust to the source of stagnation. Using Bayesian methods, we estimate a DSGE model that can accommodate two competing hypotheses of long-run stagnation in Japan. We document that equilibrium selection under indeterminacy ...
Working Paper
Exchange Rate Disconnect and the Trade Balance
We propose a model with costly international financial intermediation that links exchange rate movements to shifts in the demand for domestically produced goods relative to the demand for imported goods (trade rebalancing). Our model is consistent with stylized facts of exchange rate dynamics, including those related to the trade balance, which is typically overlooked in the literature on exchange rate determination. In a quantitative assessment, trade rebalancing explains nearly 50 percent of exchange rate fluctuations over the business cycle, whereas exogenous deviations from the uncovered ...
Working Paper
Global Flight to Safety, Business Cycles, and the Dollar
We develop a two-country macroeconomic model that we fit to a set of aggregate prices and quantities for the U.S. and the rest of the world. In addition to a standard array of shocks, the model includes time variation in agents’ preference for safe bonds. We allow for a component of this time variation to be common across countries and biased toward dollar-denominated safe assets, and refer to this component as global flight to safety (GFS). We find that GFS shocks are the most important shocks driving world business cycles, and are also important drivers of activity in the U.S. and ...