Search Results
Working Paper
Trade Costs and Inflation Dynamics
We study how trade cost shocks influence inflation. Using bilateral trade flows from detailed global input-output data and a gravity framework, we estimate trade cost shocks and their effects on CPI inflation. Higher trade costs for final goods cause large but short-lived inflation spikes, while increased costs for intermediate inputs trigger more persistent inflation. A multi-country model of inflation with trade in final goods and intermediate inputs replicates these patterns. We show that trade cost shocks and tariffs on imported inputs transmit through global value chains and worsen ...
Working Paper
Trade Costs and Inflation Dynamics
We explore how shocks to trade costs affect inflation dynamics in the global economy. We exploit bilateral trade flows of final and intermediate goods together with the structure of static trade models that deliver gravity equations to identify exogenous changes in trade costs between countries. We then use a local projections approach to assess the effects of trade cost shocks on consumer price (CPI) inflation. Higher trade costs of final goods lead to large but short-lived increases in inflation, while increases in trade costs of intermediate goods generate small but persistent increases in ...
Journal Article
The Asymmetric Costs of Misperceiving R-star
The natural rate of interest, or r-star, is used to evaluate whether monetary policy is restrictive or supportive of economic activity. However, this benchmark rate can only be estimated, and policymakers’ misperceptions of the level of the natural rate can carry substantial economic costs in terms of unemployment and inflation. A scenario using mistaken perceptions shows that the costs of overestimating the natural rate are greater than the cost of underestimating it if policy space is limited by the effective lower bound on the nominal federal funds rate.
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Effects of Banking Sector Losses across Structural Models
The macro spillover effects of capital shortfalls in the financial intermediation sector are compared across five dynamic equilibrium models for policy analysis. Although all the models considered share antecedents and a methodological core, each model emphasizes different transmission channels. This approach delivers "model-based confidence intervals" for the real and financial effects of shocks originating in the financial sector. The range of outcomes predicted by the five models is only slightly narrower than confidence intervals produced by simple vector autoregressions.
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Tradeoffs and the Federal Reserve's Dual Mandate
Some key structural features of the U.S. economy appear to have changed in the recent decades, making the conduct of monetary policy more challenging. In particular, there is high uncertainty about the levels of the natural rate of interest and unemployment as well as about the effect of economic activity on inflation. At the same time, a prolonged period of below-target inflation has raised concerns about the unanchoring of inflation expectations at levels below the Federal Open Market Committee’s inflation target. In addition, a low natural rate of interest increases the probability of ...
Discussion Paper
How Resilient Were Emerging Market Economies Through the 2022-23 U.S. Monetary Tightening Cycle?
The cross-border spillover effects of shifts in U.S. monetary policy have long been a focus of academics and policymakers alike. A common finding in the literature is that changes in the stance of U.S. monetary policy have sizable effects on economic activity and financial markets in emerging market economies (EMEs).
Discussion Paper
Modeling the Global Effects of the COVID-19 Sudden Stop in Capital Flows
The COVID-19 outbreak has triggered unusually fast outflows of dollar funding from emerging market economies (EMEs). These outflows are known as sudden stop episodes, and are typically followed by economic contractions.
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
Has the Inflation Process Become More Persistent? Evidence from the Major Advanced Economies
The sustained surge in inflation around the world following the pandemic has raised the possibility that the inflation process has become more persistent. Such a rise in persistence could result from firms and households putting greater weight on past inflation outcomes in their price- and wage-setting decisions than they did in the recent past, say, because they have less conviction that inflation will return promptly to target.
Discussion Paper
How Do Trade Disruptions Affect Inflation?
To quantify the effects of trade disruptions on inflation, we construct a measure of bilateral trade costs for a panel of 41 countries using annual data from 1995 through 2020. We then estimate an empirical model linking changes in trade costs to inflation.