Search Results
Journal Article
The Unequal Recovery: Measuring Financial Distress by ZIP Code
Since 2015, households in the poorest ZIP codes appear to have become more financially vulnerable.
COVID-19 and Financial Distress: Vulnerability to Infection and Death
Although COVID-19 initially spread faster in areas with low financial distress, evidence suggests that infections may spread most rapidly in highly financially distressed areas moving forward.
Journal Article
Measuring Levels of Debt in the Eighth District’s Key Metro Areas
Debt growth and delinquency rate data do not seem to indicate that a severe debt problem may be brewing in these cities.
Working Paper
Financial Distress and Macroeconomic Risks
This paper investigates how, and how much, household financial distress (FD), arising from allowing debts to go unpaid, matters for the aggregate and cross-sectional consumption responses to macroeconomic risk. Through a battery of structural models, we show that FD can affect consumption responses through three channels: (1) as another margin of adjustment to shocks (direct channel); (2) because its persistence implies a significant degree of preference heterogeneity (indirect channel); and (3) because it can exacerbate macroeconomic risks whenever it is more severe in the hardest-hit ...
Working Paper
Household Financial Distress and the Burden of “Aggregate” Shocks
The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in their "FD-intensity," measured either by how much additional credit households therein can access, or in how delinquent they typically are on debts, (ii) shocks that are typically viewed as "aggregate" in nature hit geographic areas quite differently, and (iii) FD is an economic "preexisting ...
Reopening the U.S.: Gauging the Trend of COVID-19 Transmissions
An analysis suggests that counties accounting for the vast bulk of U.S. GDP aren’t yet seeing a downward trajectory in COVID-19 cases, but growth rates have generally slowed.
How Spread Out Is the U.S. Population?
Half the nation’s population lives in less than 5% of its counties.
Working Paper
Consumption in the Great Recession: The Financial Distress Channel
During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the US varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. Our message is that household financial health matters for understanding this relationship. Two facts are essential for our finding: (1) the decline in house prices led to an increase in household financial distress (FD) prior to the decline in income during the recession, and (2) at the zip-code level, the prevalence of FD prior to the recession was positively correlated with house-price declines at the onset of the recession. We measure the power of the ...
Journal Article
Geographic Disparity in the U.S. Population
About half the U.S. population resides on less than 200,000 square miles; the rest is spread over more than 3 million square miles.
Working Paper
Household Financial Distress and the Burden of ‘Aggregate’ Shocks
In this paper we show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly and can increase vulnerability to economic shocks. To do this, we establish three facts: (i) regions in the United States vary significantly in their “FD-intensity,” measured either by how much additional credit households can access or how delinquent they are on debts, (ii) shocks that are typically viewed as “aggregate” in nature hit geographic areas quite differently, and (iii) FD is an economic “pre-existing condition”: the share of an aggregate shock borne by a region is positively correlated ...