Empirical work on exchange-rate behavior under a target-zone regime has used data produced by the European Monetary System (ENS) and has found that the data contradict important predictions made by the standard target-zone model. We argue that the contradictions reflect a misinterpretation of...

Central banks across the globe introduced large-scale asset purchase programs to address the unprecedented circumstances experienced during the pandemic. Many of these programs were announced as open-ended to shock-and-awe market participants and restore confidence in financial markets. This...

Was the Depression forecastable? After the Crash, how long did it take contemporary economic forecasters to realize how severe the downturn was going to be? How long should it Have taken them to come to this realization? These questions are addressed by studying the predictions of the Harvard...

This paper jointly estimates the relationship between stock share and expectations and risk preferences. The survey allows individual-level, quantitative estimates of risk tolerance and of the perceived mean and variance of stock returns. These estimates have economically and statistically...

How worker productivity evolves with tenure and experience is central to economics, shaping, for example, life-cycle earnings and the losses from involuntary job separation. Yet, worker-level productivity is hard to identify from observational data. This paper introduces direct measurement of...

Key macro indicators such as output, productivity, and inflation are based on a complex system across multiple statistical agencies using different samples and different levels of aggregation. The Census Bureau collects nominal sales, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects prices, and the...

Having low liquidity and a high marginal propensity to consume (MPC) are tightly linked. This paper analyzes this linkage in the context of income tax withholding and refunds. A theory of rational cash management with income uncertainty endogenizes the relationship between illiquidity and the...

The Subjective ex ante Treatment Effect is the difference between the probabilities of an outcome conditional on a treatment. The SeaTE yields ex ante causal effects at the individual level. The paper gives an interpretation in two workhorse econometric frameworks: potential outcomes and dynamic...

Traditional methods of collecting data from businesses and households face increasing challenges. These include declining response rates to surveys, increasing costs to traditional modes of data collection, and the difficulty of keeping pace with rapid changes in the economy. The digitization of...

Cognitive decline may lead older Americans to make poor financial decisions. Preventing poor decisions may require timely transfer of financial control to a reliable agent. Cognitive decline, however, can develop unnoticed, creating the possibility of suboptimal timing of the transfer of...