Maximilian Grimm, Oscar Jorda, Moritz Schularick, Alan M. Taylor
Do periods of persistently loose monetary policy increase financial fragility and the likelihood of a financial crisis? This is a central question for policymakers, yet the literature does not provide systematic empirical evidence about this link at the aggregate level. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing long run historical data. We find that when the stance of monetary policy is accommodative over an extended period, the likelihood of financial turmoil down the road increases considerably. We investigate the causal pathways that lead to this result and argue that credit creation and asset price overheating are important intermediating channels.
{"title":"Loose Monetary Policy and Financial Instability","authors":"Maximilian Grimm, Oscar Jorda, Moritz Schularick, Alan M. Taylor","doi":"10.24148/wp2023-06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2023-06","url":null,"abstract":"Do periods of persistently loose monetary policy increase financial fragility and the likelihood of a financial crisis? This is a central question for policymakers, yet the literature does not provide systematic empirical evidence about this link at the aggregate level. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing long run historical data. We find that when the stance of monetary policy is accommodative over an extended period, the likelihood of financial turmoil down the road increases considerably. We investigate the causal pathways that lead to this result and argue that credit creation and asset price overheating are important intermediating channels.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"97 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134921493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cristhian Hernando Ruiz Cardozo, Jens H. E. Christensen
Portfolio diversification is as important to debt management as it is to asset management. In this paper, we focus on diversification of sovereign debt issuance through greater reliance on inflation-indexed bonds for a representative emerging economy, Colombia. Using an arbitrage-free dynamic term structure model of fixed-coupon and inflation-indexed bond prices, we account for inflation and liquidity risk premia and calculate the net benefit of issuing inflation-indexed bonds over nominal bonds. Our results suggest that the Colombian government could lower its funding costs by as much as 0.69 percent by increasing its issuance of inflation-indexed debt, in particular at long maturities.
{"title":"The Benefit of Inflation-Indexed Debt: Evidence from an Emerging Bond Market","authors":"Cristhian Hernando Ruiz Cardozo, Jens H. E. Christensen","doi":"10.24148/wp2023-04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2023-04","url":null,"abstract":"Portfolio diversification is as important to debt management as it is to asset management. In this paper, we focus on diversification of sovereign debt issuance through greater reliance on inflation-indexed bonds for a representative emerging economy, Colombia. Using an arbitrage-free dynamic term structure model of fixed-coupon and inflation-indexed bond prices, we account for inflation and liquidity risk premia and calculate the net benefit of issuing inflation-indexed bonds over nominal bonds. Our results suggest that the Colombian government could lower its funding costs by as much as 0.69 percent by increasing its issuance of inflation-indexed debt, in particular at long maturities.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114968014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abe Dunn, Joshua D. Gottlieb, Adam Hale Shapiro, Daniel J. Sonnenstuhl, Pietro Tebaldi
Who bears the consequences of administrative problems in healthcare? We use data on repeated interactions between a large sample of U.S. physicians and many different insurers to document the complexity of healthcare billing, and estimate its economic costs for doctors and consequences for patients. Observing the back-and-forth sequences of claim denials and resubmissions for past visits, we can estimate physicians’ costs of haggling with insurers to collect payments. Combining these costs with the revenue never collected, we estimate that physicians lose 18% of Medicaid revenue to billing problems, compared with 4.7% for Medicare and 2.4% for commercial insurers. Identifying off of physician movers and practices that span state boundaries, we find that physicians respond to billing problems by refusing to accept Medicaid patients in states with more severe billing hurdles. These hurdles are quantitatively just as important as payment rates for explaining variation in physicians’ willingness to treat Medicaid patients. We conclude that administrative frictions have first-order costs for doctors, patients, and equality of access to healthcare. We quantify the potential economic gains—in terms of reduced public spending or increased access to physicians—if these frictions could be reduced, and find them to be sizable.
{"title":"A Denial a Day Keeps the Doctor Away","authors":"Abe Dunn, Joshua D. Gottlieb, Adam Hale Shapiro, Daniel J. Sonnenstuhl, Pietro Tebaldi","doi":"10.24148/wp2023-03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2023-03","url":null,"abstract":"Who bears the consequences of administrative problems in healthcare? We use data on repeated interactions between a large sample of U.S. physicians and many different insurers to document the complexity of healthcare billing, and estimate its economic costs for doctors and consequences for patients. Observing the back-and-forth sequences of claim denials and resubmissions for past visits, we can estimate physicians’ costs of haggling with insurers to collect payments. Combining these costs with the revenue never collected, we estimate that physicians lose 18% of Medicaid revenue to billing problems, compared with 4.7% for Medicare and 2.4% for commercial insurers. Identifying off of physician movers and practices that span state boundaries, we find that physicians respond to billing problems by refusing to accept Medicaid patients in states with more severe billing hurdles. These hurdles are quantitatively just as important as payment rates for explaining variation in physicians’ willingness to treat Medicaid patients. We conclude that administrative frictions have first-order costs for doctors, patients, and equality of access to healthcare. We quantify the potential economic gains—in terms of reduced public spending or increased access to physicians—if these frictions could be reduced, and find them to be sizable.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135789448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax credits, research and development tax credits, a set of tax policies targeted to the biotechnology industry, and a broad set of tax policies that attract star scientists. The experiences at the state level are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these employment and knowledge-capital tax incentives in creating jobs and spurring innovation. The paper concludes with four other considerations need to be taken into account in selecting policies.
{"title":"Fiscal Policies for Job Creation and Innovation: The Experiences of US States","authors":"Robert S. Chirinko, Daniel Wilson","doi":"10.24148/wp2023-01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2023-01","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax credits, research and development tax credits, a set of tax policies targeted to the biotechnology industry, and a broad set of tax policies that attract star scientists. The experiences at the state level are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these employment and knowledge-capital tax incentives in creating jobs and spurring innovation. The paper concludes with four other considerations need to be taken into account in selecting policies.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135898197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fiscal support measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic varied in their targeted beneficiaries. Relying on variability across 10 large economies, we study differences in the inflationary effects of fiscal support measures targeting consumers or businesses. Because conventional measures of real activity were distorted, we control for the underlying state of real economy using households sentiment data. We find that fiscal support measures to consumers, but not firms, had inflationary effects that manifested 5 weeks following the announcement and peaked at 12 weeks. The magnitude of the effect was larger in an environment of improving consumer sentiment.
{"title":"Inflationary Effects of Fiscal Support to Households and Firms","authors":"G. Hale, J. Leer, Fernanda Nechio","doi":"10.24148/wp2023-02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2023-02","url":null,"abstract":"Fiscal support measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic varied in their targeted beneficiaries. Relying on variability across 10 large economies, we study differences in the inflationary effects of fiscal support measures targeting consumers or businesses. Because conventional measures of real activity were distorted, we control for the underlying state of real economy using households sentiment data. We find that fiscal support measures to consumers, but not firms, had inflationary effects that manifested 5 weeks following the announcement and peaked at 12 weeks. The magnitude of the effect was larger in an environment of improving consumer sentiment.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130329356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The stimulus effects of expansionary fiscal policy under average inflation targeting (AIT) depends on both monetary and fiscal policy regimes. AIT features an inflation makeup under the monetary regime, but not under the fiscal regime. In normal times, AIT amplifies the short-run fiscal multipliers under both regimes while mitigating the cumulative multiplies due to intertemporal substitution. In a zero-lower-bound (ZLB) period, AIT reduces fiscal multipliers under a monetary regime by shortening the duration of the ZLB through expected inflation makeup. Under the fiscal regime, AIT has a nonlinear effect on fiscal multipliers because of the absence of inflation makeup and the presence of a nominal wealth effect.
{"title":"Fiscal Stimulus Under Average Inflation Targeting","authors":"Zheng Liu, Jianjun Miao, Dongling Su","doi":"10.24148/wp2022-22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2022-22","url":null,"abstract":"The stimulus effects of expansionary fiscal policy under average inflation targeting (AIT) depends on both monetary and fiscal policy regimes. AIT features an inflation makeup under the monetary regime, but not under the fiscal regime. In normal times, AIT amplifies the short-run fiscal multipliers under both regimes while mitigating the cumulative multiplies due to intertemporal substitution. In a zero-lower-bound (ZLB) period, AIT reduces fiscal multipliers under a monetary regime by shortening the duration of the ZLB through expected inflation makeup. Under the fiscal regime, AIT has a nonlinear effect on fiscal multipliers because of the absence of inflation makeup and the presence of a nominal wealth effect.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126924171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite the ubiquity of inflation targeting, central banks communicate their frameworks in a variety of ways. No central bank explicitly expresses their conduct via a policy rule, which contrasts with models of policy. Central banks often connect theory with their practice by publishing inflation forecasts that can, in principle, implicitly convey their reaction function. We return to this central idea to show how a central bank can achieve the gains of a rule-based policy without publicly stating a specific rule. The approach requires central banks to specify an inflation target, inflation tolerance bands, and provide economic projections. When inflation moves outside the band, inflation forecasts provide a time frame over which inflation will return to within the band. We show how this communication replicates and provides the same information as a rule-based policy. In addition, the communication strategy produces a natural benchmark for assessing central bank performance.
{"title":"Communicating Monetary Policy Rules","authors":"Troy A. Davig, Andrew T. Foerster","doi":"10.18651/RWP2017-04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18651/RWP2017-04","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the ubiquity of inflation targeting, central banks communicate their frameworks in a variety of ways. No central bank explicitly expresses their conduct via a policy rule, which contrasts with models of policy. Central banks often connect theory with their practice by publishing inflation forecasts that can, in principle, implicitly convey their reaction function. We return to this central idea to show how a central bank can achieve the gains of a rule-based policy without publicly stating a specific rule. The approach requires central banks to specify an inflation target, inflation tolerance bands, and provide economic projections. When inflation moves outside the band, inflation forecasts provide a time frame over which inflation will return to within the band. We show how this communication replicates and provides the same information as a rule-based policy. In addition, the communication strategy produces a natural benchmark for assessing central bank performance.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125448362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The extent to which either supply or demand factors drive inflation has important implications for economic policy. I propose a framework to decompose inflation into supply- and demand-driven components. I generate two new data series, the supply and demand-driven contributions to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, which quantify the degree to which either demand or supply is driving inflation in a current month. The series show expected time-series patterns. The demand-driven contribution tends to decline during recessions, while the supply-driven contribution tends to follow food and energy prices. Monetary policy tightening acts to reduce the demand-driven contribution of inflation. Oil-supply shocks act to increase the supply driven contribution, but decrease the demand-driven contribution of inflation. The decompositions can be used to test theory or by policymakers and practitioners to track inflation drivers in real time.
{"title":"Decomposing Supply and Demand Driven Inflation","authors":"A. Shapiro","doi":"10.24148/wp2022-18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2022-18","url":null,"abstract":"The extent to which either supply or demand factors drive inflation has important implications for economic policy. I propose a framework to decompose inflation into supply- and demand-driven components. I generate two new data series, the supply and demand-driven contributions to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, which quantify the degree to which either demand or supply is driving inflation in a current month. The series show expected time-series patterns. The demand-driven contribution tends to decline during recessions, while the supply-driven contribution tends to follow food and energy prices. Monetary policy tightening acts to reduce the demand-driven contribution of inflation. Oil-supply shocks act to increase the supply driven contribution, but decrease the demand-driven contribution of inflation. The decompositions can be used to test theory or by policymakers and practitioners to track inflation drivers in real time.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121960400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The U.S. economy came into the pandemic, and looks likely to leave it, on a slow-growth path. The near- term level of potential output has fallen because of shortfalls in labor that should reverse over time. Labor productivity, to a surprising degree, has followed an accelerated version of its Great Recession path with initially strong growth followed by weak growth. But, as of mid-2022, it appears that the overall level of labor and total factor productivity are only modestly affected. The sign of the effect depends on whether we use the strong income-side measures of pandemic output growth or the much weaker expenditure-side measures. There is considerable heterogeneity across industries. We can explain some but not all of the heterogeneity through industry differences in cyclical utilization and off-the-clock hours worked. After accounting for these factors, industries where it is easy to work from home have grown somewhat faster than they did pre-pandemic. In contrast, industries where it is hard to work from home have performed extremely poorly.
{"title":"The Impact of COVID on Productivity and Potential Output","authors":"John G. Fernald, Huiyu Li","doi":"10.24148/wp2022-19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2022-19","url":null,"abstract":"The U.S. economy came into the pandemic, and looks likely to leave it, on a slow-growth path. The near- term level of potential output has fallen because of shortfalls in labor that should reverse over time. Labor productivity, to a surprising degree, has followed an accelerated version of its Great Recession path with initially strong growth followed by weak growth. But, as of mid-2022, it appears that the overall level of labor and total factor productivity are only modestly affected. The sign of the effect depends on whether we use the strong income-side measures of pandemic output growth or the much weaker expenditure-side measures. There is considerable heterogeneity across industries. We can explain some but not all of the heterogeneity through industry differences in cyclical utilization and off-the-clock hours worked. After accounting for these factors, industries where it is easy to work from home have grown somewhat faster than they did pre-pandemic. In contrast, industries where it is hard to work from home have performed extremely poorly.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128367323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using a nationally representative panel of consumer credit records for the US from 1999 to 2021, we document a positive correlation between child and parent homeownership. We propose a new causal mechanism behind this relationship based on parents extracting home equity to help finance their child's home purchase and quantify this mechanism in several ways. First, controlling for cohort, zip code, age, and the creditworthiness of parents and children, we find that children whose parents extract equity are 60% more likely to become a homeowner than children whose homeowner-parents do not extract equity. Second, using an event study approach, we find that the increase in child homeownership occurs almost entirely in the year when parents extract equity. Third, using variation in equity extraction induced by households near leverage constraints, we find parental equity extraction increases the child's probability of becoming a homeowner by about five times. Our results highlight the importance of familial wealth for household wealth accumulation and housing wealth in particular. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that dynastic home equity increases housing wealth inequality among young adults by 20%.
{"title":"Dynastic Home Equity","authors":"M. Benetton, Marianna Kudlyak, John B. Mondragón","doi":"10.24148/wp2022-13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2022-13","url":null,"abstract":"Using a nationally representative panel of consumer credit records for the US from 1999 to 2021, we document a positive correlation between child and parent homeownership. We propose a new causal mechanism behind this relationship based on parents extracting home equity to help finance their child's home purchase and quantify this mechanism in several ways. First, controlling for cohort, zip code, age, and the creditworthiness of parents and children, we find that children whose parents extract equity are 60% more likely to become a homeowner than children whose homeowner-parents do not extract equity. Second, using an event study approach, we find that the increase in child homeownership occurs almost entirely in the year when parents extract equity. Third, using variation in equity extraction induced by households near leverage constraints, we find parental equity extraction increases the child's probability of becoming a homeowner by about five times. Our results highlight the importance of familial wealth for household wealth accumulation and housing wealth in particular. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that dynastic home equity increases housing wealth inequality among young adults by 20%.","PeriodicalId":250744,"journal":{"name":"Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working Paper Series","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123840718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}