Journal of Money Credit and Banking最新文献

Using responses obtained through the Nielsen Homescan panel survey, we explore the differences between managers’ and nonmanagers’ expectations and perceptions of inflation and unemployment. By and large, managers and nonmanagers exhibit similar average inflation and unemployment expectations as well as similar levels of disagreement and sensitivity to information provided in a randomized control trial. Responses to hypothetical questions suggest that inflation expectations of managers frequently affect their economic decisions. Finally, the inflation expectations of managers deviate systematically from the predictions of “anchored” expectations.

This paper empirically examines the effects of fiscal measures during COVID-19, using a novel database of daily fiscal policy announcements—classified by type of fiscal measure—and high-frequency economic indicators for 52 countries from January 1 to December 31, 2020. Results suggest that fiscal policy announcements have been effective in stimulating economic activity, boosting confidence, and reducing unemployment, but their effect varies by type of measure and country characteristics. Emergency lifeline measures are more effective when containment policies are stringent, providing cashflow support to most affected firms and households. Demand support measures are more effective when containment measures are relaxed.

During the U.S. National Banking Period (1863–1913), a network of correspondent bank relationships created vulnerabilities to bank failures and financial panics. Using data on correspondent relationships for all national, state, savings, and private banks just before the Panic of 1893, along with the precise dates of bank suspensions, we show that prior suspensions of both upstream and downstream correspondents increased the likelihood that a given bank would itself suspend, and that these effects varied over the Panic. Conditional on suspension, banks with prior correspondent suspensions were also more likely to reopen. New York Clearinghouse banks, despite low incidences of actual failure, saw significant balance sheet weakening early in the Panic when downstream respondents suspended, and falling stock prices throughout.

This paper investigates the relationship between heterogeneity in sectoral price stickiness and the response of the economy to aggregate real shocks. We show that sectoral heterogeneity reduces inflation persistence for a constant average duration of price spells, and that inflation persistence can fall despite duration increases associated with increases in heterogeneity. We also find that sectoral heterogeneity reduces the persistence and volatility of interest rate and output gap for a constant price spells duration, while the qualitative impact on inflation volatility tends to be positive. A relevant policy implication is that neglecting price stickiness heterogeneity can impair the economic dynamics assessment.

We use the staggered introduction of new flight routes to identify reductions in travel time between banks’ headquarters and branches to examine their effects on branch outputs and efficiency. Reductions in headquarters–branch travel time increases branch-level mortgage origination volume, and these loans exhibit higher ex post performance. Further analyses suggest these effects are due to branch employees working harder and more efficiently in seeking new customers and screening applications. Overall, our results imply that geographic proximity enables bank headquarters to monitor branches more effectively and mitigate distance-related agency costs.

I propose an approach to quantify attention to inflation and show that attention declined after the Great Inflation period. This decline in attention has important implications for monetary policy as it renders managing inflation expectations more difficult and can lead to inflation-attention traps: prolonged periods of a binding lower bound and low inflation due to slowly adjusting inflation expectations. As attention declines, the optimal policy response is to increase the inflation target. The lower bound fundamentally changes the normative implications of declining attention: lower attention raises welfare absent the lower-bound constraint, whereas it decreases welfare when accounting for the lower bound.

Examining two decades of loan-level data on Italian bank loans to households and businesses, we find that credit fluctuations primarily result from changes in the number of borrowers (extensive margin). Employing a flow approach, we decompose the extensive margin into inflows and outflows, revealing that borrower inflows significantly contribute to total borrower volatility. Moreover, borrower inflows exhibit greater volatility than outflows, are procyclical, and lead the business cycle. Utilizing a shift-and-share instrument derived from sectoral borrower inflows, our findings reveal that local markets experiencing increased credit demand exhibit a loosening of lending standards and a rise in bad loans. This sheds light on the intricate relationship between credit demand and financial instability at the local level.

This paper proposes a novel link between credit markets and uncertainty shocks. We introduce a role for credit uncertainty via collateral constraints in an otherwise standard real business cycle (RBC) model and show that an increase in credit uncertainty triggers a precautionary response that interacts with the collateral constraint to generate a simultaneous decline in output, consumption, investment, real wages, and hours; a feature that previous work on uncertainty shocks without credit constraints is unable to produce in a flexible-price environment. We also empirically test the theoretical predictions and show that an unforeseen increase in credit uncertainty generates a simultaneous decline in a broad measure of real activity in recessions.