Search Results
Discussion Paper
What About Spending on Consumer Goods?
In a recent Liberty Street Economics post, I showed that one major category of consumer spending?spending on discretionary services such as recreation, transportation, and household utilities?behaved very differently in the 2007-09 recession and subsequent recovery than in previous business cycles: specifically, it fell more steeply and has recovered much more slowly. This finding prompted one of the editors of this blog to inquire whether consumer goods spending has also departed markedly from its behavior in past cycles. To answer that question, I examined the decline of expenditures on ...
Speech
Important choices for the Federal Reserve in the years ahead: remarks at Lehman College, Bronx, New York
Remarks at Lehman College, Bronx, New York.
Journal Article
Weaker GDP Growth, Inflation Uncertainty Dim U.S. Economic Outlook
Forecasts for weaker U.S. GDP growth in 2023 and uncertainty over high inflation contrast sharply with strong labor market conditions and household consumption.
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 ...
Speech
Remarks at the 2015 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum
Remarks at the 2015 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, New York City.