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Discussion Paper
Estimating Retail Credit in the U.S.
In this note, we estimate the size of an understudied segment of the consumer credit market—retail credit. Retail credit consists of the amounts owed to retail stores by their customers for purchases made on credit extended in partnership with a financial institution. Although retail credit is included in the consumer credit totals in Federal Reserve Statistical Release G.19, "Consumer Credit," a principal economic indicator providing the official estimate for consumer credit holdings in the U.S., it is not separately categorized on the release.
Discussion Paper
A Few Thoughts on the Recent Deceleration of Student Loan Debt
While the amount of student loan debt outstanding has continued to rise in recent quarters, its rate of growth has slowed recently.
Working Paper
The Multiplier Effect of Education Expenditure
This paper examines the short-run effects of federal education expenditures on local income. We exploit city-level variation in exposure to national changes in the $30-billion Federal Pell Grant Program, which is the largest program to help low-income students attend college in the U.S., to calculate fiscal multipliers of education expenditures. An increase in Pell grants by 1 percent of a city's income raises local income by 2.4 percent over the next two years. This multiplier effect is larger than estimates for military spending (1.5 on average). Multipliers are higher when grants are ...