47 posts on "Recession"
May 27, 2020
Job Training Mismatch and the COVID‑19 Recovery: A Cautionary Note from the Great Recession
Displaced workers have been shown to endure persistent losses years beyond their initial job separation events. These losses are especially amplified during recessions. (1) One explanation for greater persistence in downturns relative to booms, is that firms and industries on the margin of structural change permanently shift the types of tasks and occupations demanded after a large negative shock (Aghion et al. (2005)), but these new occupations do not match the stock of human capital held by those currently displaced. In response to COVID-19, firms with products and services that complement social-distancing (like Amazon distribution centers) may continue hiring during and beyond the recovery, while workers displaced from higher risk industries with more stagnant demand (for example, airport personnel, local retail clerks) are left to adjust to unfamiliar job opportunities. As some industries reopen gradually while others remain stunted, what role might workforce development programs have in bridging the skill gap such that displaced workers are best prepared for this new reality of work?
April 15, 2020
The COVID‑19 Pandemic and the Fed’s Response
In this post, the authors review the Fed’s action following the coronavirus outbreak, and compare it with the response to the 2007-09 financial crisis.
April 8, 2020
How Does Supervision Affect Bank Performance during Downturns?
New research finds that there is a cyclical nature to the benefits of bank supervisory attention: in normal times, the benefits are smaller, but during downturns the more closely supervised banks exhibit better loan performance and lower earnings volatility.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Crisis, Federal Reserve, Financial Institutions, Recession, Systemic Risk | Permalink
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 the 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?
Posted 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?
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.
Posted at 7:00 am in Banks, Credit, Crisis, Household Finance, Housing, Recession | Permalink | Comments (8)
February 24, 2020
Understanding Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian Models: Insights from a PRANK
To shed light on the macroeconomic consequences of heterogeneity, Acharya and Dogra develop a stylized HANK model that contains key features present in more complicated HANK models.
Posted at 7:00 am in Central Bank, Credit, Federal Reserve, Financial Institutions, Fiscal Policy, Inequality, Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy, Recession, Systemic Risk | Permalink
February 12, 2020
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part Two
New work by Richard Crump, Domenico Giannone, and David Lucca finds labor market data to be the most reliable information for dating the U.S. business cycle.
Posted at 7:00 am in Labor Market, Macroeconomics, Recession, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 10, 2020
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part One
Richard Crump, Domenico Giannone, and David Lucca discuss different conceptual approaches to dating the business cycle and study their past performance for the U.S. economy.
July 12, 2019
Just Released: Historical Reconstruction of the New York Fed Staff Nowcast, 2002‑15
The New York Fed Staff Nowcast has been running for over three years. Each Friday at 11:15 a.m., we publish our updated predictions for real GDP growth based on the data released each week. When the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases the first estimate of GDP growth, we stop updating our nowcast and archive it. We maintain these archives as part of our Nowcasting Report on the New York Fed’s public website to allow users to study the features of the nowcast and its accuracy. Now, to better understand the model and its performance during different cyclical episodes, we are publishing extended historical archives of the nowcast. Doing so provides fourteen additional years of forecasts that can be used not only to evaluate our nowcast model, but also to explore daily U.S. economic history through the model’s lens.
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?
Posted at 7:00 am in Education, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Market, Recession | Permalink | Comments (5)
RSS Feed
Follow Liberty Street Economics
