Research Department Working Papers
Interest Rate Surprises: A Tale of Two Shocks
Interest rate surprises around FOMC announcements reveal both the surprise in the monetary policy stance (the pure policy shock) and interest rate movements driven by exogenous information about the economy from the central bank (the information shock). In order to disentangle the effects of these two shocks, this paper uses interest rate changes on days of macroeconomic data releases.
August 22, 2022
Globalization Institute Working Paper
Social Distancing, Vaccination and Evolution of COVID-19 Transmission Rates in Europe
This paper provides estimates of COVID-19 transmission rates and explains their evolution for selected European countries since the start of the pandemic taking account of changes in voluntary and government-mandated social distancing, incentives to comply, vaccination and the emergence of new variants.
July 12, 2022
‘Great ratios’ in economics don’t all add up
"Great ratios" are widely adopted in theoretical models in economics as conditions for balanced growth, arbitrage or solvency. However, the empirical literature has tended to find little evidence for them.
October 19, 2021
COVID-19 risks expose vulnerabilities, downside risks to U.S. outlook
The COVID-19 crisis has adversely affected the U.S. economy, helping account for a projected 3.4 percent contraction in 2020. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipates a strong 4.6 percent rebound in 2021, making up for those losses.
March 02, 2021
Systemic risks, interdependencies weigh on 2021 global outlook
The path of economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession remains far from clear. A fitful rollout of vaccines and governmental responses to new variants of the virus loom over a global growth rebound that private forecasters estimate at 5.5 percent for 2021.
February 16, 2021
The production process drives fluctuations in output and uncertainty
If economic developments drive most of the changes in uncertainty—rather than the reverse—then the direct effect of a change in uncertainty on economic activity is much smaller than previous research has shown.
June 30, 2020
Crude oil price changes quicker to register at gasoline pump
How big an impact should we expect on gasoline prices? Based on recent research, most of the initial effect showed up quickly at the pump.
October 01, 2019
U.S. tax cuts boost economy—but for how long?
Did the U.S. tax cuts boost economic activity in 2018? The answer is yes, at least according to the recent empirical literature on the macroeconomic effects of taxes.
June 04, 2019