Federal Reserve

FEDS Paper: How Firms Form Beliefs and the Implications for Inflation

Robert Minton and Hugo MonneryUsing survey data from U.S. firms, we study the primitive beliefs for pricesetting: firms’ forecasts of their own marginal costs. These forecasts are disconnected from CPI expectations, (over)react to current and past costs systematically, and underreact to aggregate shocks until costs move. We show that under empirically realistic cost beliefs the New Keynesian Phillips curve is steeper and less forward-looking. Supply shocks are more inflationary because they hit costs quickly.

FEDS Paper: Credit Surfaces and Economic Uncertainty

John Geanakoplos and David E. RappoportThe Credit Surface along the leverage dimension gives the bond spread as a function of the loan-to-value ratio. Empirically, we show that uncertainty shocks typically increase spreads and steepen the credit surface, profoundly affecting the supply of credit. Theoretically, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the convexity of the credit surface, and for changes in the anticipated distribution of collateral prices that lead to steepening of the credit surface.

IFDP Paper: Transmission Growth-at-Risk: How Foreign Financial Vulnerabilities Shape U.S. Growth Prospects

Sai Ma, Viktors Stebunovs, Judit TemesvaryWe develop a Transmission Growth-at-Risk (TGaR) framework that incorporates foreign financial vulnerabilities as predictors of U.S. downside growth risk. We distinguish financial conditions, which measure current tightness in credit markets, from financial vulnerabilities, which measure structural fragilities that can amplify shocks.

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