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The Effect of Weather on First-Quarter GDP
In a pattern similar to that of the previous year, the U.S. economy appeared to slow down this past winter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis currently estimates that gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 0.6% (at an annualized rate) in the first quarter of 2015. And as in the previous year, harsh winter weather has been cited by some observers as being responsible for the slowdown. However, there is substantial disagreement on the impact of weather on economic activity.
Newsletter
What is Driving the Return Spread Between “Safe” and “Risky” Assets?
Real interest rates on U.S. government bonds have declined persistently since the 1980s. U.S. government bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government and, hence, are considered one of the safest assets because the risk of default is extremely low. More broadly, interest rates on other safe assets, such as highly rated corporations, have also declined.
Working Paper
Risk Premia at the ZLB: A Macroeconomic Interpretation
Historically, inflation is negatively correlated with stock returns, leading investors to fear inflation. We document using a variety of measures that this association became positive in the U.S. during the 2008-2015 period. We then show how an off-the-shelf New Keynesian model can reproduce this change of association due to the binding zero lower bound (ZLB) on short-term nominal interest rates during this period: in the model, demand shocks become more important when the ZLB binds because the central bank cannot respond as effectively as when interest rates are positive. This changing ...
Newsletter
Changes in the Risk-Management Environment for Monetary Policy
In response to the massive challenges presented by the global financial crisis, in late 2007 the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began a series of large reductions in its traditional policy tool, the overnight interest rate in the federal funds market. By December 2008 the Committee had lowered the target to its effective lower bound (ELB) of 0 to 25 basis points.1 Later, in an attempt to provide additional monetary stimulus, the FOMC implemented nontraditional policy tools, such as large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance about how long the fed funds rate would stay at very low ...
Working Paper
Can Intangible Capital Explain Cyclical Movements in the Labor Wedge?
Intangible capital is an important factor of production in modern economies that is generally neglected in business cycle analyses. We demonstrate that intangible capital can have a substantial impact on business cycle dynamics, especially if the intangible is complementary with production capacity. We focus on customer capital: the capital embodied in the relationships a firm has with its customers. Introducing customer capital into a standard real business cycle model generates a volatile and countercyclical labor wedge, due to a mismeasured marginal product of labor. We also provide new ...
Newsletter
What is the Economic Impact of the Slowdown in New Business Formation?
Economists have emphasized the importance of ?creative destruction? as an engine of growth. The creative destruction process involves a constant reorganization of the economy as old products, firms, factories, and jobs are replaced by new ones. An important part of this process lies in the opening of new firms or establishments.
Newsletter
Recent Trends in Capital Accumulation and Implications for Investment
Business investment has been fairly low over the past several years. As a result, the growth in the stock of capital has not kept up with the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) or employment. This Chicago Fed Letter studies these recent trends and discusses their implications for future investment.
Journal Article
The Effect of Winter Weather on U.S. Economic Activity
The authors? findings support the view that weather has a significant, but short-lived, effect on economic activity. Except for a few industries, which are affected importantly (such as utilities, construction, hospitality and to a lesser extent retail), the effect is not very big, so that even the fairly bad weather during the 2013?14 winter cannot account entirely for the weak economy during that period. Other factors must have been at play.
Working Paper
Size-dependent regulations, firm size distribution, and reallocation
In France, firms with 50 employees or more face substantially more regulation than firms with less than 50. As a result, the size distribution of firms is visibly distorted: there are many firms with exactly 49 employees. We model the regulation as the combination of a sunk cost that must be paid the first time the firm reaches 50 employees, and a payroll tax that is paid each period thereafter when the firm operates with more than 50 employees. We estimate the model using indirect inference by fitting the discontinuity of the size distribution. The key finding is that the regulation is ...
Working Paper
The Tradeoffs in Leaning Against the Wind
Credit booms sometimes lead to financial crises which are accompanied with severe and persistent economic slumps. Does this imply that monetary policy should ?lean against the wind? and counteract excess credit growth, even at the cost of higher output and inflation volatility? We study this issue quantitatively in a standard small New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which includes a risk of financial crisis that depends on ?excess credit?. We compare monetary policy rules that respond to the output gap with rules that respond to excess credit. We find that leaning ...