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Speech
The Great Recalibration of U.S. Monetary Policy
It is a pleasure to participate in this policy panel at the International Research Forum on Monetary Policy sponsored by the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met last week; so in my brief prepared remarks, I will review the FOMC’s recent decisions and put them into context. As a reminder, the views I present today will be my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve System or of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee.
Working Paper
COVID-19: A View from the Labor Market
This paper examines the response of the U.S. labor market to a large and persistent job separation rate shock, motivated by the ongoing economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use nonlinear methods to analytically and numerically characterize the responses of vacancy creation and unemployment. Vacancies decline in response to the shock when firms expect persistent job destruction and the number of unemployed searching for work is low. Quantitatively, under our baseline forecast the unemployment rate peaks at 19.7%, 2 months after the shock, and takes 1 year to return to 5%. Relative to ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a reduced demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. The reduced demand for density is driven partially by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value of access to consumption amenities. ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a greater decline in the demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. We further show that the reduced demand for density is partially driven by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value ...
Working Paper
Implications of Student Loan COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Measures for Families with Children
The initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout likely posed particular financial strain on U.S. households with children, who faced income disruptions from widespread jobs and hours cuts in addition to new childcare and instruction demands. One common expense for many such households is their student loan payment. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act included provisions to curb the impacts of these payments, which have been extended several times. These measures were not targeted and thus applied independent of need. This chapter ...
Working Paper
Termination of SNAP Emergency Allotments, Food Sufficiency, and Economic Hardships
To meet the rising need for food and nutrition assistance during the pandemic in the United States, all states were approved to provide Emergency Allotments (EA) to households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In this analysis, we use the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Surveys and exploit staggered state-level variation in dissolution of the SNAP EA payments to study whether the end of EA is associated with food-related challenges and economic hardships. Our findings indicate that EA termination is followed by a decrease in the likelihood that adult ...
Working Paper
Parental Employment at the Onset of the Pandemic: Effects of Lockdowns and Government Policies
The COVID-19 pandemic had disproportionate impacts on women's employment, especially for mothers with school-age and younger children.However, the impacts likely varied depending on the type of policy response adopted by various governments. New Zealand presents a unique policy setting in which one of the strictest lockdown restrictions was combined with a generous wage subsidy scheme to secure employment. We utilize tax records to compare employment patterns of parents from the pandemic period (treatment group) to similar parents from a recent pre-pandemic period (control group). For mothers ...
Newsletter
The Effects of the “Great Resignation” on Labor Market Slack and Inflation
The fraction of Americans switching their jobs has been increasing at a fast pace in the past 18 months, reaching its highest level on record. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 4.5 million people voluntarily left their jobs in November 2021—the largest figure in the past two decades. This period has been dubbed the Great Resignation. At the same time, wages and salaries have accelerated considerably and by the end of 2021, inflation had hit its highest level since 1982.
Working Paper
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Asian American Employment
This paper documents that the employment of Asian Americans with no college education has been especially hard hit by the economic crisis associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. This cannot be explained by differences in demographics or in job characteristics, and the pattern does not apply to the 2008 economic crisis. We find some evidence that the effect is larger in occupations with more interpersonal tasks. Asian American employment is also harder hit unconditional on education. This suggests that different selection into education levels across ethnic groups alone cannot explain the main ...
Working Paper
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Asian American Employment
Recent studies have documented the disparate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor market outcomes for different racial groups. This paper adds to this literature by documenting that the employment of Asian Americans - in particular those with no college education - has been especially hard hit by the economic crisis associated with the onset of the pandemic. This can only partly be explained by differences in demographics, local market conditions, and job characteristics, and it also cannot be entirely explained by possible different selection into education levels across ethnic groups. ...