Journal Article
Unintended Consequences of Coronavirus-Related Unemployment Insurance Tax Laws
Amburgey, Aaron; Birinci, Serdar (2020-04-17)
Waived employer payroll tax increases for state unemployment insurance appear to have increased layoffs.
Economic Synopses , Issue 21

Which Workers Have Been Most Affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Birinci, Serdar; Amburgey, Aaron (2020-07-30)
Occupations that earn less than $34,963 on average—such as cashiers, servers and janitors—accounted for 34% of the increase in unemployment from January to April.
On the Economy

Price Volatility and Headline Inflation
McCracken, Michael W.; Amburgey, Aaron (2021-08-24)
Movements in “sticky prices”—items that show low price volatility—may indicate that recent swings in U.S. headline inflation are only temporary.
On the Economy

Job Switching Rates during a Recession
Birinci, Serdar; Amburgey, Aaron (2021-08-19)
The rate at which workers move to new jobs has progressed differently during the COVID-19 recession than during the Great Recession.
On the Economy

Working Paper
Growth-at-Risk is Investment-at-Risk
Amburgey, Aaron; McCracken, Michael W. (2024-08-16)
We investigate the role financial conditions play in the composition of U.S. growth-at-risk. We document that, by a wide margin, growth-at-risk is investment-at-risk. That is, if financial conditions indicate U.S. real GDP growth will be in the lower tail of its conditional distribution, we know that the main contributor is a decline in investment. Consumption contributes under extreme financial stress. Government spending and net exports do not play a role. We show that leverage plays a key role in determining both consumption- and investment-at-risk, which provides support to the financial ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-020

Working Paper
On the Real-Time Predictive Content of Financial Conditions Indices for Growth
McCracken, Michael W.; Amburgey, Aaron (2022-01-18)
We provide evidence on the real-time predictive content of the National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI), for conditional quantiles of U.S. real GDP growth. Our work is distinct from the literature in two specific ways. First, we construct (unofficial) real-time vintages of the NFCI. This allows us to conduct out-of-sample analysis without introducing the kind of look-ahead biases that are naturally introduced when using a single current vintage. We then develop methods for conducting asymptotic inference on tests of equal tick loss between nested quantile regression models when the data are ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-003

Inflation Expectations and the Fed’s New Monetary Framework
McCracken, Michael W.; Amburgey, Aaron (2021-07-08)
Markets are expecting higher inflation in coming years, which could test the Fed’s new strategy of flexible average inflation targeting.
On the Economy

The St. Louis Fed's Financial Stress Index, Version 2.0
Amburgey, Aaron; Kliesen, Kevin L.; McCracken, Michael W.; Bokun, Kathryn (2020-03-26)
The St. Louis Fed's financial stress index has been recalibrated to better capture evolving stresses in financial markets.
On the Economy

Journal Article
The Great Resignation vs. The Great Reallocation: Industry-Level Evidence
Birinci, Serdar; Amburgey, Aaron (2022-03-04)
Some workers have experienced the Great Resignation, but others have gone through the Great Reallocation— transferring from one job to another.
Economic Synopses , Issue 4 , Pages 1-2

Market-Based Measures of Inflation Risks
McCracken, Michael W.; Amburgey, Aaron (2021-03-24)
Forecasts typically focus on estimates of expected inflation, but some forecasts look at the probability of different inflation rates in the future.
On the Economy