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Working Paper
Supply-Side Effects of Pandemic Mortality: Insights from an Overlapping-Generations Model
We use an overlapping generation model to explore the implications of mortality during pandemics for the economy's productive capacity. Under current epidemiological projections for the progression of COVID-19, our model suggests that mortality will have, in itself, at most small effects on output and factor prices. The reason is that projected mortality is small in proportion to the population and skewed toward individuals who are retired from the labor force. That said, we show that if the spread of COVID-19 is not contained, or if the ongoing pandemic were to follow a mortality pattern ...
More Households Face Food Scarcity during COVID-19
More U.S. households are reporting that they sometimes or often do not have enough food, according to a new Census survey.
Working Paper
Firm and Worker Dynamics in an Aging Labor Market
I develop an idea flows theory of firm and worker dynamics in order to assess the consequences of population aging. Older people are less likely to attempt entrepreneurship and switch employers because they have found better jobs. Consequently, aging reduces entry and worker mobility through a composition effect. In equilibrium, the lower entry rate implies fewer new, better job opportunities for workers, while the better matched labor market dissuades job creation and entry. Aging accounts for a large share of substantial declines in firm and worker dynamics since the 1980s, primarily due to ...
Discussion Paper
Demographics and Disparities in the Fifth District
Although the Fifth District’s black population tends to have higher employment and educational attainment compared to the nation’s, there are still significant disparities relative to whites.
Working Paper
Understanding the New Normal : The Role of Demographics
Since the onset of the Great Recession, the U.S. economy has experienced low real GDP growth and low real interest rates, including for long maturities. We show that these developments were largely predictable by calibrating an overlapping-generation model with a rich demographic structure to observed and projected changes in U.S. population, family composition, life expectancy, and labor market activity. The model accounts for a 1?percentage point decline in both real GDP growth and the equilibrium real interest rate since 1980?essentially all of the permanent declines in those variables ...
Working Paper
Demographics and the Evolution of Global Imbalances
The age distribution evolves asymmetrically across countries, influencing relative saving rates and labor supply. Emerging economies experienced faster increases in working age shares than advanced economies did. Using a dynamic, multicountry model I quantify the effect of demographic changes on trade imbalances across 28 countries since 1970. Counterfactually holding demographics constant reduces net exports in emerging economies and boosts them in advanced economies. On average, a one percentage point increase in a country?s working age share, relative to the world, increases its ratio of ...
Discussion Paper
How Many Businesses in the Fifth District are Minority-Owned?
Briefing
Portfolios Across the U.S. Wealth Distribution
In this article, we examine how household portfolios vary with wealth, age and race. Households in the middle of the wealth distribution hold most of their wealth as real estate, while wealthier households are more heavily invested in stocks and private business equity. As households age, they repay education loans and other debt and accumulate real estate and (to a lesser extent) financial assets. We find that Black households hold considerably less home equity, stocks and business equity. This can be explained (statistically) by lower levels of total wealth and by differences in age and ...
Working Paper
Neighborhood Choices, Neighborhood Effects and Housing Vouchers
We study how households choose neighborhoods, how neighborhoods affect child ability, and how housing vouchers influence neighborhood choices and child outcomes. We use two new panel data sets with tract-level detail for Los Angeles county to estimate a dynamic model of optimal tract-level location choice for renting households and, separately, the impact of living in a given tract on child test scores (which we call ?child ability" throughout). We simulate optimal location choices and changes in child ability of the poorest households in our sample under various housing-voucher policies. We ...