David Glancy, Robert Kurtzman, Lara LoewensteinPlace-based policies are often caught between two potentially conflicting aims: (i) directing aid to needy communities and (ii) spurring investment. We study this tradeoff in the context of the Opportunity Zones (OZ) program.
Christopher Gust, Edward Herbst, and David López-SalidoWe develop a finite-horizon planning model in which firms choose how far ahead to plan when setting prices. Planning further ahead improves a firm's pricing decision but requires cognitive effort.
Manuel Gonzalez-Astudillo, Jean-Philippe Laforte, Antoine LepetitPotential output and the natural rate of unemployment are commonly estimated through trend-cycle decompositions, where they are identified as underlying trends reflecting slow-moving supply factors.
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.
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.
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.
R. Matthew Darst, Lucia Gurrieri, Arazi Lubis, and Alexandros P. VardoulakisThis paper examines whether regulatory liquidity buffers enable banks to support corporate borrowers during financial stress.
Diego VilánThis study examines how fluctuations in firm-level uncertainty arise over the business cycle and how they influence aggregate economic activity. To do so, it develops a general equilibrium incomplete-markets model in which heterogeneous, risk-averse firms face idiosyncratic demand uncertainty and aggregate shocks to consumer credit conditions.
Cody KallenA substantial portion of corporate debt remains hidden from balance sheets. I document two forms of off-balance-sheet leverage in nonfinancial corporations: operating leases (pre-2019) and intraperiod borrowing—short-term debt issued and repaid within reporting periods, which I am the first to study in nonfinancial firms.
Domenico Ferraro, Giuseppe Fiori, and Damian PierriWe develop a business cycle model with perfectly competitive product and labor markets in which production requires a minimum labor input, generating endogenous capacity utilization. The aggregate production function is kinked, featuring constant returns to scale below capacity—typically in recessions—and decreasing returns at capacity in expansions.
