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Working Paper
Medical Expenses and Saving in Retirement: The Case of U.S. and Sweden
Many U.S. households have significant wealth late in life, contrary to the predictions of a simple life-cycle model. In this paper, we document stark differences between U.S. and Sweden regarding out-of-pocket medical and long-term-care expenses late in life, and use them to investigate their role in discouraging the elderly from dissaving. Using a consumption-saving model in retirement with significant uninsurable expense risk, we find that medical expense risk accounts for a quarter of the U.S.-Sweden difference in retirees' dissaving patterns. Furthermore, medical expense risk affects ...
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Concentrated Growth: The Role of the IT Sector
Productivity is the engine of economic growth and a key factor in determining standards of living and economic well-being. In this article, we study the distribution of total factor productivity (TFP) growth across sectors of the U.S. economy—i.e., the composition of TFP growth—and demonstrate that over approximately the past four decades, U.S. TFP growth has been highly concentrated, with the information technology (IT) sector in particular playing a large and outsized role.
Working Paper
A Global Lending Channel Unplugged? Does U.S. Monetary Policy Affect Cross-border and Affiliate Lending by Global U.S. Banks?
We examine how U.S. monetary policy affects the international activities of U.S. Banks. We access a rarely studied U.S. bank-level regulatory dataset to assess at a quarterly frequency how changes in the U.S. Federal funds rate (before the crisis) and quantitative easing (after the onset of the crisis) affects changes in cross-border claims by U.S. banks across countries, maturities and sectors, and also affects changes in claims by their foreign affiliates. We find robust evidence consistent with the existence of a potent global bank lending channel. In response to changes in U.S. monetary ...