The seeds of financial imbalances are sown in times of buoyant economic growth. We study the link between macroeconomic performance and financial imbalances, focusing on the experience of the United States since the 1960s. We first follow a narrative approach to review historical episodes of...

We use a dynamic factor model to disentangle changes in prices due to economy-wide (common) shocks, from changes in prices due to idiosyncratic shocks. Using 146 disaggregated individual price series from the U.S. PCE price index, we find that most of the fluctuations in core PCE prices observed...

The seeds of financial imbalances are sown in times of buoyant economic growth. We study the link between macroeconomic performance and financial imbalances, focusing on the experience of the United States since the 1960s. We first follow a narrative approach to review historical episodes of...

Machine learning (ML) techniques are used to construct a financial conditions index (FCI). The components of the ML-FCI are selected based on their ability to predict the unemployment rate one-year ahead. Three lessons for macroeconomics and variable selection/dimension reduction with large...

We examine how housing supply constraints affect housing affordability, which we define as the quality-adjusted price of housing services. In our dynamic model, supply constraints increase the price of housing services by only half has much as the purchase price of a home, since the purchase...

Young firms disproportionately employ young workers, controlling for firm size, industry, geography and time. The same positive correlation between young firms and young employees holds when we look just at new hires. On average, young employees in young firms earn higher wages than young...

Using matched employee-employer US Census data, we examine the effect of a successful initial public offering (IPO) on employee departures to startups. Accounting for the endogeneity of a firm’s choice to go public, we find strong evidence that going public induces employees to leave for...

Central bank large-scale asset purchases, such as the purchase of securities of nonfinancial firms, can induce a misallocation of resources through their heterogeneous effect on firm cost of capital. First, we analytically demonstrate the mechanism in a two-period model. We then evaluate the...

The Lehman Brothers' 2008 bankruptcy spread losses to its counterparties even when Lehman was a lender of cash, because collateral for that lending was tied up in the bankruptcy process. I study the implications of such lender default using a general equilibrium network model featuring...

This analysis of Allan Meltzer’s analytical framework focuses on the role that Meltzer assigned to the monetary base. For many years, Meltzer suggested that central banks should use the monetary base as their policy instrument, in place of a short-term nominal interest rate. However, he...