Search Results
Working Paper
Measuring Inclusion: Gender and Coauthorship at the Federal Reserve Board
Relative to diversity, inclusion is much harder to measure. We measure inclusion of women in economics using novel data on coauthoring relationships among Federal Reserve Board economists. Individual coauthoring relationships are voluntary, yet inclusion in coauthoring networks can be central to research productivity and career success. We document gender affinity in coauthoring, with individuals up to 34 percent more likely to have a same-gender coauthor in the data relative to what would be predicted by random assignment. Because women account for under 30 percent of Federal Reserve Board ...
Working Paper
Early Public Banks
Publicly owned or commissioned banks were common in Europe from the fifteenth century. This survey argues that while the early public banks were characterized by great experimentation in their design, a common goal was to create a liquid and reliable monetary asset in environments where such assets were rare or unavailable. The success of these banks was however never guaranteed, and even well-run banks could become unstable over time as their success made them susceptible to fiscal exploitation. The popularization of bearer notes in the eighteenth century broadened the user base for the ...
Report
Star Wars at Central Banks
We investigate the credibility of central bank research by searching for traces of researcher bias, which is a tendency to use undisclosed analytical procedures that raise measured levels of statistical significance (stars) in artificial ways. To conduct our search, we compile a new dataset and borrow 2 bias-detection methods from the literature: the p-curve and z-curve. The results are mixed. The p-curve shows no traces of researcher bias but has a high propensity to produce false negatives. The z-curve shows some traces of researcher bias but requires strong assumptions. We examine those ...
Working Paper
Gender Gaps in the Federal Reserve System
To better understand the stalled progress of women in economics, we construct new data on women's representation and research output in one of the largest policy institutions—the Federal Reserve System. We document a slight increase in women’s representation over the past 20 years, in line with academic trends. We also document a significant gender gap in research output, especially for years in which economists have greater domestic responsibilities, but nearly absent gender gaps in policy output and career progression. This work complements existing research on women in academia, ...
Newsletter
Past and Future Effects of the Recent Monetary Policy Tightening
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has raised short-term interest rates over 500 basis points since early last year, but it recently slowed the pace of policy tightening and some participants have signaled that the current tightening cycle might be nearing its end. In making the decision to stop raising rates, an important consideration will be the extent to which the actions already taken by the Committee have yet to feed through to the economy. On the one hand, if substantial effects of past policy tightening are yet to come, that would argue for an earlier end to rate increases, all ...
Working Paper
Market Effects of Central Bank Credit Markets Support Programs in Europe
Using responses of credit default swap indexes to ECB monetary policy announcements, we isolate a novel credit policy component of monetary policy surprises. We examine how such unconventional monetary policy surprises affect investor perceptions of credit risk and the functioning of primary corporate debt markets. Favorable credit surprises cause declines in uncertainty about credit risk and suggest a more stable outlook on its dynamics over the following months. Both net and gross corporate bond issuance increase as a result of favorable credit surprises, with the largest response in ...