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Jel Classification:C38 

Working Paper
Identification Through Sparsity in Factor Models

Factor models are generally subject to a rotational indeterminacy, meaning that individual factors are only identified up to a rotation. In the presence of local factors, which only affect a subset of the outcomes, we show that the implied sparsity of the loading matrix can be used to solve this rotational indeterminacy. We further prove that a rotation criterion based on the 1-norm of the loading matrix can be used to achieve identification even under approximate sparsity in the loading matrix. This enables us to consistently estimate individual factors, and to interpret them as structural ...
Working Papers , Paper 20-25

Working Paper
Tracking U.S. Consumers in Real Time with a New Weekly Index of Retail Trade

We create a new weekly index of retail trade that accurately predicts the U.S. Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS). The index's weekly frequency provides an early snapshot of the MRTS and allows for a more granular analysis of the aggregate consumer response to fast-moving events such as the Covid-19 pandemic. To construct the index, we extract the co-movement in weekly data series capturing credit and debit card transactions, foot traffic, gasoline sales, and consumer sentiment. To ensure that the index is representative of aggregate retail spending, we implementa novel ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2021-05

Working Paper
Growth-at-Risk is Investment-at-Risk

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
Tax Progressivity, Economic Booms, and Trickle-Up Economics

We propose a method to decompose changes in the tax structure into orthogonal components measuring the level and progressivity of taxes. Similar to tax shocks found in the existing empirical literature, the level shock is contractionary. The tax progressivity shock is expansionary: Increasing tax progressivity raises (lowers) disposable income at the bottom (top) end of the income distribution by shifting the tax burden from the bottom to the top. If agents' marginal propensity to consume falls with income, the rise in consumption at the bottom more than compensates for the decline in ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-034

Working Paper
The Factor Structure of Disagreement

We estimate a Bayesian three-dimensional dynamic factor model on the individual forecasts in the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The factors extract the most important dimensions along which disagreement comoves across variables. We interpret our results through a general semi-structural dispersed information model. The two most important factors in the data describe disagreement about aggregate supply and demand, respectively. Up until the Great Moderation, supply disagreement was dominant, while in recent decades and particularly during the Great Recession, demand disagreement was most ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2021-046

Working Paper
House Price Growth Interdependencies and Comovement

This paper examines house price diffusion across metropolitan areas in the United States. We develop a generalization of the Hamilton and Owyang (2012) Markov-switching model, where we incorporate direct regional spillovers using a spatial weighting matrix. The Markov-switching framework allows consideration for house price movements that occur due to similar timing of downturns across MSAs. The inclusion of the spatial weighting matrix improves fit compared to a standard endogenous clustering model. We find seven clusters of MSAs that experience idiosyncratic recessions plus one distinct ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-28

Working Paper
Growth-at-Risk is Investment-at-Risk

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.
Working Papers , Paper 2023-020

What Does the NFCI Tell Us About Future Economic Growth?

The Federal Reserve’s policy tools rely on financial markets to transmit changes in monetary policy to the real economy. For instance, changes in short-term interest rates set by the Fed and faced by financial institutions—e.g., the federal funds rate—affect longer-term rates paid by firms and households. These rate changes in turn impact borrowing and spending decisions. Understanding the current state of financial conditions is, thus, both critical to central bankers and of interest to the wider public.
Chicago Fed Insights

Working Paper
On the Real-Time Predictive Content of Financial Conditions Indices for Growth

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

Working Paper
Individual Social Capital and Migration

This paper determines how individual, relative to community, social capital affects individual migration decisions. We make use of nonpublic data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey to predict multidimensional social capital for observations in the Current Population Survey. We find evidence that individuals are much less likely to have moved to a community with average social capital levels lower than their own and that higher levels of community social capital act as positive pull-factor amenities. The importance of that amenity differs across urban/rural locations. We also ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2018-3

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McCracken, Michael W. 5 items

Amburgey, Aaron 4 items

Brave, Scott A. 4 items

Freyaldenhoven, Simon 4 items

Jackson, Laura E. 4 items

Owyang, Michael T. 4 items

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C32 18 items

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factor models 4 items

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