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Working Paper
Turbulent Business Cycles
Firm-level evidence suggests that turbulence that reshuffles firms’ productivity rankings rises sharply in recessions. An increase in turbulence reallocates labor and capital from high- to low-productivity firms, reducing aggregate TFP and the stock market value of firms. A real business cycle model with heterogeneous firms and financial frictions can generate the observed macroeconomic and reallocation effects of turbulence. In the model, increased turbulence makes high-productivity firms less likely to remain productive, reducing their expected equity values and tightening their borrowing ...
Working Paper
Federal Reserve Balance-Sheet Policy in an Ample Reserves Framework: An Inventory Approach
I apply techniques from stochastic inventory theory to calibrate the optimal balance-sheet buffer needed to implement monetary policy in an ample reserves regime. I quantify the size of the buffer to be about $60 billion. This is small relative to the reserves needed for an ample reserves regime, even though the FOMC appears to act as if the cost of too few reserves is over 20 times as high as the cost of too many.
Working Paper
Spread Too Thin: The Impact of Lean Inventories
Widespread adoption of just-in-time (JIT) production has reduced inventory holdings. This paper finds that JIT creates a trade-off between firm profitability and vulnerability to large shocks. Empirically, JIT adopters experience higher sales and less volatility while also exhibiting heightened cyclicality and sensitivity to natural disasters. I explain these facts in a structurally estimated general equilibrium model where firms can adopt JIT. Relative to a no-JIT economy, the estimated model implies a 1.3% increase in firm value. At the same time, an unanticipated shock results in a roughly ...
Discussion Paper
Market Failures and Official Sector Interventions
In the United States and other free market economies, the official sector typically has minimal involvement in market activities absent a clear rationale to justify intervention, such as a market failure. In this post, we consider arguments for official sector intervention, focusing on the market failure arising from externalities related to business closures. These externalities are likely to be particularly high for closures arising from pandemic-related economic disruptions. We discuss how the official sector, including institutions such as Congress and the Treasury, can increase social ...
Working Paper
Federal Reserve Balance-Sheet Policy in an Ample Reserves Framework: An Inventory Approach
Implementing monetary policy in an ample reserves regime means choosing a level of reserves that balances the cost of reserves against interest rate volatility. I use techniques from stochastic inventory theory to calibrate the size of the buffer needed to keep reserves above the ample level, and find the buffer size to be modest compared to the level of reserves needed to reach the ample level.