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Liberty Street Economics
23 posts on "Recession"August 18, 2020
Debt Relief and the CARES Act: Which Borrowers Benefit the Most?
COVID-19 and associated social distancing measures have had major labor market ramifications, with massive job losses and furloughs. Millions of people have filed jobless claims since mid-March—6.9 million in the week of March 28 alone. These developments will surely lead to financial hardship for millions of Americans, especially those who hold outstanding debts while facing diminishing or disappearing wages. The CARES Act, passed by Congress on April 2, 2020, provided $2.2 trillion in disaster relief to combat the economic impacts of COVID-19. Among other measures, it included mortgage and student debt relief measures to alleviate the cash flow problems of borrowers. In this post, we examine who could benefit most (and by how much) from various debt relief provisions under the CARES Act.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Demographics, Education, Household Finance, Housing, Inequality, Mortgages, Recession, Regulation, Student Loans | Permalink | Comments (2)August 04, 2020
Tracking the COVID-19 Economy with the Weekly Economic Index (WEI)
At the end of March, we launched the Weekly Economic Index (WEI) as a tool to monitor changes in real activity during the pandemic. The rapid deterioration in economic conditions made it important to assess developments as soon as possible, rather than waiting for monthly and quarterly data to be released. In this post, we describe how the WEI has measured the effects of COVID-19. So far in 2020, the WEI has synthesized daily and weekly data to measure GDP growth remarkably well. We document this performance, and we offer some guidance on evaluating the WEI’s forecasting abilities based on 2020 data and interpreting WEI updates and revisions.
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Posted by Blog Author at 2:58 PM in Corporate Finance, Forecasting, Macroecon, Pandemic, Recession | Permalink | Comments (0)April 08, 2020
How Does Supervision Affect Bank Performance during Downturns?
Supervision and regulation are critical tools for the promotion of stability and soundness in the financial sector. In a prior post, we discussed findings from our recent research paper which examines the impact of supervision on bank performance (see earlier post How Does Supervision Affect Banks?). As described in that post, we exploit new supervisory data and develop a novel strategy to estimate the impact of supervision on bank risk taking, earnings, and growth. We find that bank holding companies (BHCs or “banks”) that receive more supervisory attention have less risky loan portfolios, but do not have lower growth or profitability. In this post, we examine the benefits of supervision over time, and especially during banking industry downturns.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Bank Capital, Banks, Crisis, Federal Reserve, Financial Institutions, Great Recession, Pandemic, Recession, Systemic Risk | Permalink | Comments (0)March 27, 2020
Fight the Pandemic, Save the Economy: Lessons from the 1918 Flu
The COVID-19 outbreak has sparked urgent questions about the impact of pandemics, and associated countermeasures, on the real economy. Policymakers are in uncharted territory, with little guidance on what the expected economic fallout will be and how the crisis should be managed. In this blog post, we use insights from a recent research paper to discuss two sets of questions. First, what are the real economic effects of a pandemic—and are these effects temporary or persistent? Second, how does the local public health response affect the economic severity of the pandemic? In particular, do non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing have economic costs, or do policies that slow the spread of the pandemic also reduce its economic severity?
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Posted by Blog Author at 5:18 PM in Balance of Payments, Crisis, Economic History, Pandemic, Recession | Permalink | Comments (3)February 26, 2020
Did Subprime Borrowers Drive the Housing Boom?
Editor’s note: When this post was first published, the chart labels for “Non-Boom Counties” were incorrect; the labels have been corrected. (February 26, 12:00 pm)
The role of subprime mortgage lending in the U.S. housing boom of the 2000s is hotly debated in academic literature. One prevailing narrative ascribes the unprecedented home price growth during the mid-2000s to an expansion in mortgage lending to subprime borrowers. This post, based on our recent working paper, “Villains or Scapegoats? The Role of Subprime Borrowers in Driving the U.S. Housing Boom,” presents evidence that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom. In particular, we show that the housing boom and the subprime boom occurred in different places.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Central Bank, Credit, Crisis, Economic History, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Household, Household Finance, Housing, Mortgages, Recession | Permalink | Comments (8)February 24, 2020
Understanding Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian Models: Insights from a PRANK
In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the effect of income inequality (heterogeneity) on the economy, from both academics and policymakers. Researchers have developed Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) models that incorporate heterogeneity and uninsurable idiosyncratic risk into the New Keynesian models that have become a cornerstone of monetary policy analysis. This research has argued that heterogeneity and idiosyncratic risk change many features of New Keynesian models – the transmission of conventional monetary policy, the forward guidance puzzle, fiscal multipliers, the efficacy of targeted transfers and automatic stabilizers, among others. However, the source of the difference between HANK and representative agent New Keynesian (RANK) models remains unclear. This is because HANK models are typically not analytically tractable, leaving it unclear what exactly is driving the results. To shed light on the macroeconomic consequences of heterogeneity, we develop a stylized HANK model that contains key features present in more complicated HANK models.
Continue reading "Understanding Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian Models: Insights from a PRANK" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Central Bank, Credit, Federal Reserve, Financial Institutions, Fiscal Policy, Inequality, Macroecon, Monetary Policy, Recession, Systemic Risk | Permalink | Comments (0)February 12, 2020
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part Two
In our previous post, we presented evidence suggesting that labor market indicators provide the most reliable information for dating the U.S. business cycle. In this post, we further develop the case. In fact, the unemployment rate has provided an almost perfect record of distinguishing the beginning of recessions in the post-war U.S. economy. We also show that using more granular labor market data, such as by region or industry, also provides valuable information about the state of the business cycle.
Continue reading "Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part Two" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Labor Market, Macroecon, Recession, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (1)February 10, 2020
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part One
The study of the business cycle—fluctuations in aggregate economic activity between times of widespread expansion and contraction—is one of the foremost pursuits in macroeconomics. But even distinguishing periods of expansion and recession can be challenging. In this post, we discuss different conceptual approaches to dating the business cycle, study their past performance for the U.S. economy, and highlight the informativeness of labor market indicators.
Continue reading "Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part One" »
July 10, 2019
Did the Value of a College Degree Decline during the Great Recession?
In an earlier post, we studied how educational attainment affects labor market outcomes and earnings inequality. In this post, we investigate whether these labor market effects were preserved across the last business cycle: Did students with certain types of educational attainment weather the recession better?
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Education, Employment, Great Recession, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Economics, Labor Market, Recession, Wages | Permalink | Comments (5)February 13, 2018
Just Released: Great Recession’s Impact Lingers in Hardest-Hit Regions
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data today released our Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2017. Along with this report, we have posted an update of state-level data on balances and delinquencies for 2017. Overall aggregate debt balances increased again, with growth in all types of balances except for home equity lines of credit. In our post on the first quarter of 2017 we reported that overall balances had surpassed their peak set in the third quarter of 2008—the result of a slow but steady climb from several years of sharp deleveraging during the Great Recession.
Continue reading "Just Released: Great Recession’s Impact Lingers in Hardest-Hit Regions" »
Posted by Blog Author at 11:00 AM in Credit, Expectations, Great Recession, Household Finance, Housing, Mortgages, New Jersey, New York, Recession, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (2)About the BlogLiberty Street Economics features insight and analysis from New York Fed economists working at the intersection of research and policy. Launched in 2011, the blog takes its name from the Bank’s headquarters at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The editors are Michael Fleming, Andrew Haughwout, Thomas Klitgaard, and Asani Sarkar, all economists in the Bank’s Research Group.
Liberty Street Economics does not publish new posts during the blackout periods surrounding Federal Open Market Committee meetings.
The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System.
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