Search Results
Speech
The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy
St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem spoke at an American Enterprise Institute event in Washington, D.C. He delivered prepared remarks, “The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy,” and participated in a Q&A moderated by AEI’s Michael Strain.
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Business Expectations
We document and evaluate how businesses are reacting to the COVID-19 crisis through August 2020. First, on net, firms see the shock (thus far) largely as a demand rather than supply shock. A greater share of firms reports significant or severe disruption to sales activity than to supply chains. We compare these measures of disruption to their expected changes in selling prices and find that, even for firms that report supply chain disruption, they expect to lower near-term selling prices on average. We also show that firms are engaging in wage cuts and expect to trim wages further before the ...
Discussion Paper
What Drives International Bank Credit?
A major question facing policymakers is how to deal with slumps in bank credit. The policy prescriptions are very different depending on whether the decline is a result of global forces, domestic demand, or supply problems in a particular banking system. We present findings from new research that exactly decompose the growth in banks? aggregate foreign credit into these three factors. Using global banking data for the period 2000-16, we uncover some striking patterns in bilateral credit relationships between consolidated banking systems and borrowers in more than 200 countries. The most ...
Journal Article
Drivers of Wage and Employment Growth in Recent Years: A Supply and Demand Decomposition
Understanding whether labor market developments stem from supply or demand forces has fundamental implications for the conduct of monetary policy. This article develops a structural vector autoregression (VAR) methodology to decompose U.S. employment and wage growth into supply and demand components using sign restrictions. Extending Shapiro 2026, we separately identify trend growth, current shocks, and past shocks across different industries. Results reveal that goods-producing sectors experienced strong demand-driven growth in 2022, which subsequently weakened as Federal Reserve tightening ...
Journal Article
Oil Shocks when Interest Rates Are at the Zero Lower Bound
New evidence suggests that rising oil prices associated with declining oil supply slow economic activities less when interest rates are constrained at the zero lower bound. Moreover, these oil price spikes can even increase overall output. Evidence points to the following explanation. An oil supply shock raises inflation in all periods, but the nominal interest rate does not react under the zero lower bound, so the shock reduces the real interest rate, stimulating demand in the economy.
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Business Expectations
We document and evaluate how businesses are reacting to the COVID-19 crisis through August 2020. First, on net, firms see the shock (thus far) largely as a demand rather than supply shock. A greater share of firms reports significant or severe disruption to sales activity than to supply chains. We compare these measures of disruption to their expected changes in selling prices and find that, even for firms that report supply chain disruption, they expect to lower near-term selling prices on average. We also show that firms are engaging in wage cuts and expect to trim wages further before the ...