Should Federal Reserve use scenario analysis to handle trade war uncertainty?
The Fed is currently in a "wait and see" mode in deciding what is the reaction to Trump's trade policy. But is it possible for the Fed to be a bit more proactive than merely saying "we will be able to update you further when we know more details"?
Enters scenario analysis.
Economics Rules – Why Economists do it with Models | Q&A with Dani Rodrik
Rodrik explained why good economists think in terms of models, and what are major differences between models and theory.
He also told us why macroeconomists' quest to find "the one true model" on the business cycle is probably misguided.
Understanding the Great Recession | Interviews with Larry Christiano |
Larry Christiano, one of the most prominent researcher on DSGE model, explains what his research "Understanding the Great Recession" tell us about the Great Recession as well as labor participation rate's role in the developments of the Great Recession.
A Macroeconomic Earthquake | Q&A with Larry Christiano
In this interview, Prof Christiano shared his view on the development of post-2008 academic macroeconomics. We’ve asked Prof Christiano does he agree that modern macroeconomic models are too complicated for the general public, or even policymakers and if he agrees that economic models should be “simpler”. Does he think the recent revival of ISLM model a “good trend”? Should Macroeconomists hang on their faith in DSGE models? Should they explore alternative paths?
The problem with monetarist’s view of inflation
Long-run stability of the velocity, or the filpside of it, money demand, however, is not a empirically founded assumption.
Fed’s swap lines help easing Covid-era global dollar shortage
Countries with swap line arrangement with Federal Reserve, be it the standing ones or temporary, saw smaller increases in spread during the initial pandemic stress period.
BIS’s latest hunt for Zombie (firms)
In the latest BIS Quarterly Review, researchers Ryan Banerjee and Boris Hofmann consolidated some of the earlier research to illustrate the problem of zombie firms. They argued that the rise of zombies predated the 2008 financial crisis, and has since been dragging down the productivity of the real economy.
Bank Equity and Banking Crises
In a recent study "Bank Equity and Banking Crises" by Matthew Baron (of Cornell University), Emil Verner (MIT Sloan), and Wei Xiong (Princeton University), the three economists developed a comprehensive database of bank equity prices and banking crises with a full-sample of 46 countries from 1870-2016. They try to understand the dynamic between bank equity decline and banking crises.
IMF Growth Projections and Overfitting in Judgment-based Economic Forecasts
In a recent IMF working paper "Overfitting in Judgment-based Economic Forecasts: The Case of IMF Growth Projections", economist Klaus-Peter Hellwig examined IMF's World Economic Forecasts (WEO) and check if the forecast model suffer from the problem of overfitting.
“The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015”
How Alan Taylor, one of the authors of "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015" explains the liquidity premium problem when we compare the rate of return on Housing and Equity
Global Inequality and Kuznets Waves | Q&A with Branko Milanovic |
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
QE: A User’s Guide
In a recent policy research, Joseph Gagnon of Peterson Institute for International Economics and Brian Sack of D.E. Shaw Group asked an important question: when the Federal Reserve implement QE in the next crisis, should they use it somewhat differently?
Hysteresis – An Underrated Macroeconomics Question
Hysteresis is referred to the hypothesis that recessions may have permanent effects on the level of output relative to trend.
Why the Fed should Keep a Sizeable Balance Sheet? | Q&A with Jeremy...
Jeremy Stein, former Federal Reserve governor, talks to us about his recent research “The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet as a Financial-Stability Tool” and why the Fed should maintain a sizeable balance sheet.
Bernanke on Trump’s Fiscal Policy
Ben Bernanke has a new blog post on Brookings. The focus of the post is to explain "the large difference between the reactions of the Fed and the markets to the change in fiscal prospects since the election"
US needs large-scale Covid testing urgently: Nobel winning economist Paul Romer
In an exclusive interview with EconReporter on Tuesday, Romer, co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics Science, urged the US to adopt large-scale testing immediately to halt this most detrimental economic slump ever since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
What Macroeconomists agree with each others, according to Blanchard
Olivier Blanchard a list of things that macroeconomists normally agreed on and need no further discussions.
Media Sentiment and International Asset Prices
A new working paper from the IMF which tries to assess the impact of media sentiment on equity markets.
Integrating Psychology with Economics | Q&A with Hersh Shefrin & Shlomo Benartzi
In celebration of Richard Thaler's prize lecture for his 2017 Nobel prize, we interviewed two of his best co-authors -- Hersh Shefrin and Shlomo Benartzi -- to discuss the future of behavioral economics.
CoCo issuance and bank fragility
A series of papers by Stefan Avdjiev, Bilyana Bogdanova, Patrick Bolton, Wei Jiang, and Anastasia Kartasheva on this topic is highly recommended.
Why Negative Rate is a better policy tool to Higher Inflation Target? Bernanke Explains…
In his latest Brookings blog post "Modifying the Fed’s policy framework: Does a higher inflation target beat negative interest rates?", Ben Bernanke compares two...
Is there a Zero Lower Bound?
In a recent research, four European Central Bank economists found that negative interest rate policy in the eurozone can encourage banks to increase lending and encourage cooperations to increase investments.
That is, contrary to what macroeconomics models usually predict, interest rate policy can still has stimulative effect even the zero lower bound is reached.
Measuring Federal Reserve officials’ secret disagreement behind locked doors of FOMC meetings
Dissent votes in Federal Reserve policy meetings are rare, accounting for only 6.37% of the votes between 1976 and 2017. However, opting not to vote against the FOMC consensus doesn't necessarily mean committee members don't "disagree" with it.
Phillips Curve is Not a Straight Line…
A story about three economists agree with the prevailing consensus that the Phillips Curve of the US is flattened in the last few decades on the one hand; and dispute the idea that the Phillips Curve is dead on the other.
Where are the endpoints of QT? Ample Reserve System vs Demand-driven Floor System
Quantitative tightening (QT)—a process central banks use to reverse years of liquidity creation from quantitative easing (QE)—is concluding in many advanced economies. The central banks are growing confident that reserve levels in their financial systems are nearing their endpoints.
Where are the endpoints of QT and what come next?
Interview with Paul Romer on large scale Covid testing – Transcript
Edited transcript of our interview with Paul Romer, on why the US urgently to scale up testing for Covid-19 and why he thinks the covid-crisis amounts an intellectual failure
Major Shifts in Macroeconomics Since the Great Recession | Interview with Atif Mian
Atif Mian, co-author of House of Debt, discusses what he thinks are the "revolutionary" changes in macroeconomic academia since the Great Recession.
Aging, Output Per Capita and Secular Stagnation
Gauti B. Eggertsson, Manuel Lancastre, and Lawrence H. Summers explain in their paper "Aging, Output Per Capita and Secular Stagnation" the role of aging in the Secular Stagnation model.
The Missing Profits of Nations and Multinationals’ Extreme Profitability in Tax Havens
The economics of tax evasion is a growing field in academic economics. There are much new exciting research trying to understand the mechanism behind global tax evasion. "The Missing Profits of Nations” by Thomas R. Tørsløv, Ludvig S. Wier and Gabriel Zucman is one of the most noteworthy research on the dynamic behind global tax evasions.
How to Reform the Federal Reserve System? | Q&A with Kocherlakota |
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
How the Game of Bank Bargains Created the Financial Crisis? | Q&A with Calomiris...
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
Early signs of inflation expectation de-anchoring back in 2021
Ricardo Reis, economics professor at the London School of Economics, explained that there were telling signs that the increase in cost of living started ealry-2021 was not a "transitory" phenomenon.
Why hadn’t Federal Reserve rescued Lehman Brothers in 2008?
This week, the trio who was directly responsible for the decision to let Lehman fail – Bernanke, Tim Geithner (then New York Fed President), and Hank Paulson (then Treasury Secretary) – joined together at a panel held by Brookings Institution and spoke about the lessons they had learned from the crisis.
DSGE model and the State of Macroeconomics | Q&A with Olivier Blanchard |
In this interview, Blanchard discussed his view on the role of DSGE model in modern Macroeconomics and policymaking. He also explained his decision to rewrite his macroeconomics textbooks after the Great Recession. His recent research on hysteresis was also discussed.
The model you should use to explain Macroeconomics to your Mum | Q&A with...
>Professor Olivier Blanchard further explained the role empirical research on DSGE models, how to teach undergraduates macro after the Great Recession, and his research on hysteresis.
Standing Repo Facility — the Fed’s soon-to-be most important tool?
Standing Repo Facility (SRF) is a relatively young Federal Reserve facility. Formally established as a permanent tool in July 2021, SRF allows banks to obtain overnight liquidity with high-quality collaterals like Treasuries through a repurchase agreement. Most people may not be familiar with this "obscure" Fed tool, but it is possible that SRF will soon become one of the Fed's most important tools.
Why Does Credit Growth Crowd Out Real Economic Growth?
The faster the credit growth, the worse it is for real growth (output per worker). This is what Stephen G. Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi want to explain in their NBER working paper "Why Does Credit Growth Crowd Out Real Economic Growth?"
Central Bank’s Balance Sheet and the Rise of Reserves
The above figure shows the balance sheet of four major central banks from 2005 to 2015. Above the horizontal axis is the asset side...
Midas Paradox and the Great Depression | Q&A with Scott Sumner |
Welcome! This is the first installment of our interview series "Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?"
"Where is the General Theory of...
The Disappointments with Post-Great Recession Macroeconomics | Q&A with Kocherlakota |
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
A skeptical review of the QEs – why they might not be powerful as...
In their working paper "A Skeptical View of the Impact of the Fed's Balance Sheet," economists David Greenlaw, James D. Hamilton, Ethan Harris, and Kenneth D. West challenge some earlier studies that concluded QEs have a significant economic impact. Their major argument is that those research used simple event studies to quantify the impact of QE.
Politics and the Economics of Banking Crises | Q&A with Charles Calomiris |
In this installment, we continue our discussion with Prof. Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School. The topic of this installment is the missing role of politics in economics models of banking crises. We also discussed if Calomiris thinks macroeconomics has a similar problem.
The Non‐Bank Credit Cycle
In a new working paper "The Non‐Bank Credit Cycle", researchers Esti Kemp, René van Stralen, Alexandros Vardoulakis, and Peter Wierts tried to look into the cyclical properties of non‐bank credit and its relevance for financial stability.
What comes after housing market bubble?
An investigation into the probability of a crash in house prices following a housing bubble
The sovereign-bank “doom loop”
Since the Euro crisis, investors and policymakers are well aware of the so-called "doom loop" between the banking system and the sovereign. That is, a crisis originating in the banking system (sovereign) will weaken the sovereign (banking system), which in turn will worsen the banking (sovereign) crisis itself.
In a recent ECB discussion Paper "Managing the sovereign-bank nexus", the 7 economists - Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Caio Ferreira, Nigel Jenkinson, Luc Laeven, Alberto Martin, Camelia Minoiu, and Alexander Popov - coauthored the paper suggested that the banks and sovereigns are linked by three interacting channels:
How to use Interest on Reserve for Inflation Targeting? | Q&A with Ricardo Reis...
This is the eighth installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
In this installment, we continue our talk...
Fiscal Theory of Price Level and State of Macroeconomics | Q&A with John Cochrane...
John Cochrane talks about Fiscal Theory of Price Level and how can we apply this theory on the current macroeconomy.
What is Neo-Fisherian and FTPL? | Q&A with John Cochrane |
Cochrane discusses with us his view on the development in Macroeconomics since the Great Depression. He also explains what Neo-Fisherian and Fiscal Theory of Price Level are, and why they are important for understanding the current economic situation around the world.
FedSpeak Might Not Have Much Effects on Public’s Inflation Expectation
In a recent NBER working paper "Monetary Policy Communications and their Effects on Household Inflation Expectations", economists Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Michael Weber tried to find out how the household's expectation for inflation change with regard to the information they received.
Interview with Paul Romer – On Charter Cities (and HK) and Growth Theory
"There is a big difference between saying you want to allow for city-scale reform zones that will encourage reform of government and innovation in government, and saying that you want to do away with government entirely and let a corporate entity run a private city," says Nobel winning economist Paul Romer.
