Central banks

The control of carbon emissions by policymakers poses the corporate challenge of developing an optimal carbon management policy. We provide a unified model that characterizes how firms should optimally manage emissions through production, green investment, and the trading of carbon credits. We show that carbon pricing reduces firms’ emissions but also induces firms to tilt towards more immediate yet transient types of green investment—such as abatement as opposed to innovation—as it becomes costlier to comply.

This column presents evidence on the role that US monetary policy plays in how fiscal spending affects the economy. A dovish Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) delays policy rate increases, while a hawkish FOMC tightens monetary policy more promptly, following increased fiscal spending. We show that the dovish response supports fiscal expansions. In contrast, the hawkish response results in a GDP decline but effectively controls inflation expectations.

Christine L. Dobridge, Patrick Kennedy, Paul Landefeld, Jacob MortensonWe study changes in tax positions for U.S. C corporations following passage of the 2017 tax legislation commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). While existing research has focused primarily on publicly traded companies, data limitations have prevented more holistic analyses of the corporate sector. Using a representative sample of U.S.

Rhys Bidder, Nicolas Crouzet, Margaret M. Jacobson, Michael Siemer