Search Results
Journal Article
“Unemployment claims hit 8½-year low”: interpret with caution
An unemployment statistic based on unemployment insurance is less useful because it does not measure unemployment itself.
Journal Article
Looking at Recessions through a Different Lens
Traditionally, research about recessions focused on the big picture?how the overall economy was performing. But recent economic studies have looked at the impact on specific groups. One of the interesting findings is that the highest earners are, by some measures, the most affected by recessions.
Discussion Paper
Not Just “Stimulus” Checks: The Marginal Propensity to Repay Debt
Households frequently use stimulus checks to pay down existing debt. In this post, we discuss the empirical evidence on this marginal propensity to repay debt (MPRD), and we present new findings using the Survey of Consumer Expectations. We find that households with low net wealth-to-income ratios were more prone to use transfers from the CARES Act of March 2020 to pay down debt. We then show that standard models of consumption-saving behavior can be made consistent with these empirical findings if borrowers’ interest rates rise with debt. Our model suggests that fiscal policy may face a ...
Journal Article
\\"Where's the Wage Pressure?\\"
As the unemployment rate declines, many people assume that the average wage in the U.S. will increase. However, the average doesn't move that fast over a single business cycle. And any movement over the long term is more in favor of high-wage earners than low-wage earners.
Journal Article
Assessing the Recent Rise in Unemployment
The unemployment rate has risen over half a percentage point since the second quarter of 2023. Individual survey data underlying the unemployment rate can help in assessing which labor market transitions account for this rise. One dominant factor appears to be a fall in the job-finding rate—the share of unemployed individuals finding employment. The duration of unemployment has also increased recently. In past decades, these patterns have frequently occurred during the onset of recessions, which suggests that these data should be closely monitored.
Working Paper
Stimulus through Insurance: The Marginal Propensity to Repay Debt
Using detailed micro data, we document that households often use "stimulus" checks to pay down debt, especially those with low net wealth-to-income ratios. To rationalize these patterns, we introduce a borrowing price schedule into an otherwise standard incomplete markets model. Because interest rates rise with debt, borrowers have increasingly larger incentives to use an additional dollar to reduce debt service payments rather than consume. Using our calibrated model, we then study whether and how this marginal propensity to repay debt (MPRD) alters the aggregate implications of fiscal ...
Working Paper
Firm Exit and Liquidity: Evidence from the Great Recession
This paper studies the role of credit constraints in accounting for the dynamics of firm exit during the Great Recession. We present novel firm-level evidence on the role of credit constraints on exit behavior during the Great Recession. Firms in financial distress, with tighter access to credit, are more likely to default than firms with more access to credit. This difference widened substantially in the Great Recession while, in contrast, default rates did not vary much by size, age, or productivity. We identify conditions under which standard models of firms subject to financial frictions ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Recession: L- or V-Shaped?
We develop and calibrate a search-theoretic model of the labor market in order to forecast the evolution of the aggregate US labor market during and after the coronavirus pandemic. The model is designed to capture the heterogeneity of the transitions of individual workers across states of unemployment and employment and across different employers. The model is designed also to capture the trade-offs in the choice between temporary and permanent layoffs. Under reasonable parametrizations of the model, the lockdown instituted to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is shown to have ...
Journal Article
Job searching: some methods yield better results than others
Is one method of searching for a job better than another? Do job seekers change their approach when a recession hits?
Journal Article
Industry-Level Sources for Solid US Employment Growth: Running on Empty or More Room to Run?
The labor market has exhibited solid growth in the past few years, largely due to the strong growth in three industries: Health Care and Social Assistance (HCSA), Leisure and Hospitality (LH), and Government (G). However, while the level of payroll employment surpassed prepandemic levels, a gap of approximately 3.4 million remains between these levels and the level of employment that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. Using data on vacancies and vacancy yields, we estimate that HCSA and G are quickly approaching their prepandemic trend trajectories. LH, however, is not ...