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The Rise of Intangible Investment and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
Monetary policy acts on the economy primarily through its effects on investment spending. But the nature of investment has evolved over time: “Intangible assets”—such as intellectual property or software—play an increasingly important role in the modern economy. In this Chicago Fed Letter, we study the implications of this change for the transmission of monetary policy. We show that investment in intangible assets is less sensitive to interest rates than investment in tangible assets. This suggests that the secular shift toward intangibles has reduced the responsiveness of aggregate ...
Working Paper
Mixed Signals: Investment Distortions with Adverse Selection
We study how adverse selection distorts equilibrium investment allocations in a Walrasian credit market with two-sided heterogeneity. Representative investor and partial equilibrium economies are special cases where investment allocations are distorted above perfect information allocations. By contrast, the general setting features a pecuniary externality that leads to trade and investment allocations below perfect information levels. The degree of heterogeneity between informed agents' type governs the direction of the distortion. Moreover, contracts that complete markets dampen the impact ...
Working Paper
The Economic Effects of Firm-Level Uncertainty: Evidence Using Subjective Expectations
This paper uses over two decades of Italian survey data on business managers' expectations to measure subjective firm-level uncertainty and quantify its economic effects. We document that firm-level uncertainty persists for a few years and varies across firms' demographic characteristics. Uncertainty induces long-lasting economic effects over a broad array of real and financial variables. The source of uncertainty matters with firms responding only to downside uncertainty, that is, uncertainty about future adverse outcomes. Economy-wide uncertainty, constructed aggregating firm-level ...
Working Paper
Corporate Debt Maturity Matters for Monetary Policy
We provide novel empirical evidence that firms’ investment is more responsive to monetary policy when a higher fraction of their debt matures. In a heterogeneous firm New Keynesian model with financial frictions and endogenous debt maturity, two channels explain this finding: (1.) Firms with more maturing debt have larger roll-over needs and are therefore more exposed to fluctuations in the real interest rate (roll-over risk). (2.) These firms also have higher default risk and therefore react more strongly to changes in the real burden of outstanding nominal debt (debt overhang). ...
Working Paper
Privacy Regulation and Quality Investment
This paper analyzes whether a privacy regulation that restricts a dominant firm?s data disclosure level harms the firm?s incentives to invest in service quality and thereby harms social welfare. We study how the regulation affects the privacy and quality choices of a monopoly service provider, who derives revenues solely from disclosing user data to third parties, as well as how those choices in turn affect consumers? participation and information-sharing decisions. We show that the regulation does not always harm investment incentives; moreover, even when it does, it may still improve social ...
Working Paper
The Corporate Saving Glut in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis
We examine the increase in the net lending (saving minus investment) of nonfinancial corporations in the years preceding and especially following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). We consider whether this increase in net lending is an endogenous reflection of the current weak pace of growth or an outcome of other factors, such as firms' desire to cut investment and hoard assets, and thus an exogenous drag on growth. Looking at G7 economies, we find that the fall in corporate investment during the GFC was in line with historical norms, given the path of GDP growth, interest rates, profits, ...
Working Paper
The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty
We study the effects of unexpected changes in trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on the U.S. economy. We construct three measures of TPU based on newspaper coverage, firms' earnings conference calls, and aggregate data on tari rates. We document that increases in TPU reduce investment and activity using both firm-level and aggregate macroeconomic data. We interpret the empirical results through the lens of a two-country general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities and firms' export participation decisions. In the model as in the data, news and increased uncertainty about higher future ...
Speech
Bullard Discusses Economy and Fed’s Response to COVID-19 in Central Banking Journal Interview
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard shared his views on various aspects of the U.S. economy and the Fed’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in an interview with Central Banking Journal.
Working Paper
Corporate Taxes and the Earnings Distribution: Effects of the Domestic Production Activities Deduction
This paper investigates how corporate tax changes affect workers’ earnings. We use a dataset of U.S. worker-level W-2 filings matched with corporate tax returns and study the implementation of the Domestic Production Activities Deduction (DPAD). We find the DPAD tax rate reduction has a substantial effect on the distribution of annual wage earnings within a firm. Earnings of workers at the top of their firm’s earnings distribution rise relative to those at the bottom of the distribution. We estimate a semi-elasticity of average earnings of 1.1 with respect to the DPAD marginal tax rate ...