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Working Paper
Measuring Labor Supply and Demand Shocks during COVID-19
We measure labor demand and supply shocks at the sector level around the COVID-19 outbreak by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on monthly statistics of hours worked and real wages. Most sectors were subject to large negative labor supply and demand shocks in March and April, with substantial heterogeneity in the size of shocks across sectors. Our estimates suggest that two-thirds of the drop in the aggregate growth rate of hours in March and April 2020 are attributable to labor supply. We validate our estimates of supply shocks by showing that they are correlated with ...
Working Paper
The Nonlinear Effects of Fiscal Policy
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases is nonlinear in the spending shock, in contrast to what is assumed in most of the literature. In particular, the multiplier of a fiscal consolidation is decreasing in the size of the consolidation. We empirically document this fact using aggregate fiscal consolidation data across 15 OECD countries. We show that a neoclassical life-cycle, incomplete markets model calibrated to match key features of the U.S. economy can explain this empirical finding. The mechanism hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of ...
Working Paper
Measuring Sectoral Supply and Demand Shocks during COVID-19
We measure labor demand and supply shocks at the sector level around the COVID-19 outbreak by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on monthly statistics of hours worked and real wages. Most sectors were subject to historically large negative labor supply and demand shocks in March and April, with substantial heterogeneity in the size of shocks across sectors. Our estimates suggest that two-thirds of the drop in the aggregate growth rate of hours in March and April 2020 are attributable to labor supply. We validate our estimates of supply shocks by showing that they are ...
Report
Accounting for Business Cycles
We elaborate on the business cycle accounting method proposed by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2007), clear up some misconceptions about the method, and then apply it to compare the Great Recession across OECD countries as well as to the recessions of the 1980s in these countries. We have four main findings. First, with the notable exception of the United States, Spain, and Ireland, the Great Recession was driven primarily by the efficiency wedge. Second, in the Great Recession, the labor wedge plays a dominant role only in the United States, and the investment wedge plays a dominant role in ...
Working Paper
Measuring Sectoral Supply and Demand Shocks during COVID-19
We measure labor demand and supply shocks at the sector level around the COVID-19 outbreak by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on monthly statistics of hours worked and real wages. Most sectors were subject to historically large negative labor supply and demand shocks in March and April, with substantial heterogeneity in the size of shocks across sectors. Our estimates suggest that two-thirds of the drop in the aggregate growth rate of hours in March and April 2020 are attributable to labor supply. We validate our estimates of supply shocks by showing that they are ...
Working Paper
The Nonlinear Effects of Fiscal Policy
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases in incomplete markets models is nonlinear in the spending shock, in contrast to the multiplier in complete markets models and what is assumed in most of the literature. In particular, the multiplier is increasing in the spending shock, with large positive shocks having the largest multiplier and large negative shocks having the smallest multiplier. The mechanism hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. The model predicts that the ...
Journal Article
Is the COVID-19 Pandemic a Supply or a Demand Shock?
Labor supply shocks likely account for most of the fall in hours worked.
Working Paper
Measuring Sectoral Supply and Demand Shocks during COVID-19
We measure labor demand and supply shocks at the sector level around the COVID-19 outbreak by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on monthly statistics of hours worked and real wages. Our estimates suggest that two-thirds of the 16.24 percentage point drop in the growth rate of hours worked in April 2020 are attributable to supply. Most sectors were subject to historically large negative labor supply and demand shocks in March and April, but there is substantial heterogeneity in the size of shocks across sectors. We show that our estimates of supply shocks are correlated ...
Working Paper
Measuring Sectoral Supply and Demand Shocks during COVID-19
We measure labor demand and supply shocks at the sector level around the COVID-19 outbreak, by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on monthly statistics of hours worked and real wages and applying the methodology proposed by Baumeister and Hamilton (2015). Our estimates suggest that two-thirds of the 16.24 percentage point drop in the growth rate of hours worked in April 2020 are attributable to supply. Most sectors were subject to historically large negative labor supply and demand shocks in March and April 2020, but there is substantial heterogeneity in the size of these ...
Working Paper
The Nonlinear Effects of Fiscal Policy
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases is nonlinear in the size of the spending shock. In particular, the multiplier is increasing in the spending shock, with more expansionary government spending shocks generating larger multipliers and more contractionary shocks generating smaller multipliers. We document that empirically this holds true across time, countries and types of shocks. We then propose a neoclassical mechanism that hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. A ...