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Journal Article
President's Message: How Long Will Higher Inflation Last?
For the first time in more than a generation, we are grappling with high, broad-based, and persistent inflation.The pandemic and events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine unleashed shocks that affected supply chains and labor markets, pushing prices and wages up. In response to the pandemic, $6 trillion of fiscal stimulus was enacted, fueling demand and limiting labor supply. And some have argued the Fed's pandemic response was too expansionary for too long — that we were caught off guard after the prior decade of stubbornly low inflation.
Working Paper
Access to Refinancing and Mortgage Interest Rates: HARPing on the Importance of Competition
We explore a policy-induced change in borrower ability to shop for mortgages to investigate whether market competitiveness affects mortgage interest rates. Our paper exploits a discontinuity in the competitive landscape introduced by the Home Affordable Refinancing Program (HARP). Under HARP, lenders that currently service loans eligible for refinancing enjoyed substantial advantages over their potential competitors. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we show a jump in mortgage interest rates precisely at the HARP eligibility threshold. Our results suggest that limiting ...