Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

In this article, we introduce a new command, xtpb , that implements the Chudik, Pesaran, and Smith (Forthcoming, Econometrics and Statistics , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecosta.2023.11.001 ) pooled Bewley ( pb ) estimator of longrun relationships in dynamic heterogeneous panel-data models. The pb estimator is based on the Bewley (1979, Economics Letters 3: 357–361) transform of the autoregressive-distributed lag model, and it is applicable under a similar setting to the widely used pooled mean group estimator of Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (1999, Journal of the American Statistical Association 94: 621–634). Two bias-correctior methods and a bootstrapping algorithm for more accurate small-sample inference robust to arbitrary cross-sectional dependence of errors are also implemented. An empirical illustration reproduces the PB estimates of the consumption function as in Chudik, Pesaran, and Smith (Forthcoming).

We develop a new model of cycles and crises in emerging markets, featuring an occasionally binding borrowing constraint and stochastic volatility, and estimate it with quarterly data for Mexico since 1981. We propose an endogenous regime‐switching formulation of the occasionally binding borrowing constraint, develop a general perturbation method to solve the model, and estimate it using Bayesian methods. We find that the model fits the Mexican data well without systematically relying on large shocks, matching the typical stylized facts of emerging market business cycles and Mexico's history of sudden stops in capital flows. We also find that interest rate shocks play a smaller role in driving both cycles and crises than previously found in the literature.

The rise of inflation in 2021 and 2022 surprised many macroeconomists who ignored the earlier surge in money growth because of past instability in the demand for simple‐sum monetary aggregates. We find that the demand for more theoretically based Divisia aggregates can be modeled and that these aggregates provide useful information about nominal GDP. Unlike M2 and Divisia‐M2, whose velocities do not internalize shifts in liabilities across commercial and shadow banks, the velocities of broader Divisia monetary aggregates are stable and can be empirically modeled through the Covid‐19 pandemic. In the long run, these velocities depend on regulation and mutual fund costs that affect the substitutability of money for other financial assets. In the short run, we control for swings in mortgage activity and use vaccination rates and the stringency of government pandemic restrictions to control for the unusual pandemic effects. The velocity of broad Divisia money declines during crises like the Great and COVID Recessions but later rebounds. In these recessions, monetary policy lowered short‐term interest rates to zero and engaged in quantitative easing of about $4 trillion. Nevertheless, broad money growth was more robust in the COVID Recession, reflecting a less impaired banking system that promoted rather than hindered deposit creation. Our framework implies that nominal GDP growth and inflation rebounded more quickly from the COVID Recession versus the Great Recession. Our different scenarios for future Divisia money growth and the unwinding of the pandemic have different implications for medium‐term nominal GDP growth and inflationary pressures.

To better understand the stalled progress of women in economics, we construct new data on women's representation and research output in one of the largest policy institutions—the Federal Reserve System. We document a slight increase in women’s representation over the past 20 years, in line with academic trends. We also document a significant gender gap in research output, especially for years in which economists have greater domestic responsibilities, but nearly absent gender gaps in policy output and career progression. This work complements existing research on women in academia, allowing a more comprehensive examination of progress in the economics profession.

We use emergency outages of coal generators as an exogenous source of variation in the power generation stack to study how changes in marginal fuel affect real-time price volatility. Contrary to anecdotal evidence, we find that wholesale prices are less volatile when natural gas is on the margin more often. JEL Classification: Q4

This paper documents that labor search and matching frictions generate countercyclical uncertainty because the inherent nonlinearity in the flow of new matches makes employment uncertainty increasing in the number of people searching for work. Quantitatively, this mechanism is strong enough to explain uncertainty and real activity dynamics, including their correlation. Through this lens, uncertainty fluctuations are endogenous responses to changes in real activity that neither affect the severity of business cycles nor warrant policy intervention, in contrast with leading theories of the interaction between uncertainty and real activity dynamics. (JEL D81, E23, E24, E32, J41, J63, J64)

We quantify the effects of the political development cycle—the fluctuations between the Left (Maoist) and the Right (pragmatist) development policies—on growth and structural transformation of China in 1953–1978. The left policies prioritized structural transformation toward nonagricultural production and consumption at the expense of agricultural development. The right policies prioritized agricultural consumption through slower structural transformation. The imperfect implementation of these policies led to large welfare costs of the political development cycle in a distorted economy undergoing a structural change. (JEL D72, N15, N45, N55, O21, P21, P24)

We build and estimate a dynamic, structural model of the world oil market to quantify the impact of the shale revolution. We model the shale revolution as a decrease in shale production costs and find that the resultant increase in shale production lowers oil prices by 24% in the short run and 48% once the shale oil transition is complete. Current oil price volatility is lowered by 8% to 23% depending on the horizon. We also find that OPEC core acts to keep its market share constant in the face of the dramatic increase in shale production.

We present a new stylized fact: trade liberalization reduces entrepreneurship rates. We confirm this fact by showing that countries and industries with higher trade costs have higher entrepreneurship rates, even after accounting for confounding factors. We also use China’s entry to the WTO as an exogenous variation in trade exposure of different industries in the USA and show that industries that experienced a greater import penetration from China experienced a greater decline in their entrepreneurship rates. These patterns can be rationalized through the lens of a framework that combines a model of international trade with occupational choice. Consistent with the implications of this framework, we also find supporting evidence that there is a negative relation between entrepreneurship rate and the share of exporting firms.

The 2021–2022 surge in US inflation was unanticipated by the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and other macroeconomists and institutions. This study assesses whether nascent deep learning frameworks and methods more accurately project recent core personal consumption expenditures inflation. We create a recurrent neural network (RNN) to forecast long‐term inflation, and after training on 60 years of quarterly data, the model outperforms the SPF and projects a spike in inflation similar to that of recent years. We compare the model's performance with and without COVID‐19–specific data and discuss some implications of our findings for economic forecasting in global crises.

This paper studies the dynamics of financial responsibility division within mixed-gender couples. Analysis is based on individuals’ self-assessments of their own contribution to four household activities collected in the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice. A series of logistic regressions link reported roles from 3728 households to respondent gender and six household characteristics, representing aggregate and relative attributes with respect to age, education, and income. A second, longitudinally-based analysis relates reported contribution levels in subsequent survey years to changes in household income dynamics. For bill payments, the data are consistent with a bargaining model in which relative income rankings, more so than other household variables, relate to responsibility shares. For decisions about saving and investments and decisions on other financial matters, in addition to income rank, there is also some evidence that greater relative educational attainment coincides with greater responsibility shares. For household shopping, however, tendencies in household role assignment seem predominantly driven by gender considerations. Females across all household types consistently do more of the shopping, and females are much more likely to increase their contribution, even when they become the primary earner.

We exploit the 2007 private label securitization (PLS) freeze as a quasi‐experiment to study the impact of a negative credit supply shock on home purchases and borrowing behavior. Using a difference‐in‐differences estimator, we show that a negative supply shock to first‐lien mortgages has little impact on the volume of purchases financed with a mortgage, but significantly reduces the average first‐lien loan balance. Much of this reduction in loan balances is the result of increased bunching at the conforming loan limit that is achieved through a combination of greater second mortgage utilization and larger downpayments. Importantly, we find significant heterogeneity in the response to the mortgage supply shock across borrower characteristics and house price levels. Home purchase volume does decline after the shock for less creditworthy borrowers and in expensive locations. The reduction in first‐lien balances is fairly uniform across borrower types, however, the effect is slightly more acute in less expensive areas. Our results suggest that financial market frictions (e.g., downpayment constraints, imperfect credit) play an important role in determining how credit supply shocks impact housing purchases and borrowing behavior.

Based on novel survey data, we document a persistent rise in work from home (WFH) over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using theory and direct survey evidence, we argue that three-quarters of this increase reflects the adoption of new work arrangements that will likely be permanent for many workers. A quantitative model matched to survey data predicts that twice as many workers will WFH full-time postpandemic compared to prepandemic, and that one in every five instead of seven workdays will be WFH. These model predictions are consistent with survey evidence on workers’ own expectations about WFH in the future. (JEL I12, I18, J22, M54)

There is a new and now large literature analyzing government policies for financial stability based on models with endogenous borrowing constraints. These normative analyses build upon the concept of constrained efficient allocation where the social planner is constrained by the same borrowing limit that agents face. In this paper, we show that there exists at least one set of tools implementing the constrained efficient allocation that can also be used by a Ramsey planner to replicate an unconstrained allocation, achieving higher welfare. Constrained efficiency may lead to inaccurate characterizations of welfare maximizing policies relative to Ramsey optimal policy. (JEL E32, E44, E61, G01, H21)

While “Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes” (Bullock (1716)), the structure of taxes and their burden have undergone large and frequent changes over time. We provide a brief history of U.S. federal income tax reform since the 1960s, calculate effective federal income tax rates for each wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and discuss how effective taxation changed from 1969 to 2016. We show that most tax regimes are short-lived and that the variation in taxes over time and across groups is large. We also use an estimated dynamic model of couples and singles to show that the various tax regimes that we estimate imply very different labor market and saving behavior. These findings stress the importance of studying and modeling tax changes over time and across groups.

Using a novel dataset, we develop a structural model of the Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) market between the Arabian Gulf and the Far East. We study how fluctuations in oil tanker rates, oil exports, shipowner profits, and bunker fuel prices are determined by shocks to the supply and demand for oil tankers, to the utilization of tankers, and to the cost of operating tankers, including bunker fuel costs. Our analysis shows that time charter rates are largely unresponsive to tanker cost shocks. In response to higher costs, voyage profits decline, as cost shocks are only partially passed on to round-trip voyage rates. Oil exports from the Arabian Gulf also decline, reflecting lower demand for VLCCs. Positive utilization shocks are associated with higher profits, a slight increase in time charter rates and lower fuel prices and oil export volumes. Tanker supply and tanker demand shocks have persistent effects on time charter rates, round-trip voyage rates, the volume of oil exports, fuel prices, and profits with the expected sign.

Advocates of Medicaid expansion argue that federal Medicaid assistance to states fosters economic activity, generating positive local multiplier effects. Furthermore, during economic downturns, Congress regularly tweaks federal match rates for state Medicaid spending—including during the COVID-19 public health emergency—in order to assist states. Despite heavy reliance on Medicaid funding formulas, identifying the economic effect of these federal transfers has proved challenging. This is because federal Medicaid assistance (to states) is endogenous since funding levels are correlated with unobserved factors driving state economic activity. To address this concern, we construct an instrument based on a nonlinearity in the federal matching rate for state Medicaid spending. Using state-level panel data from 1990 to 2013, we find that federal Medicaid assistance does stimulate economic activity, but the implied cost per job created is quite high, and the multiplier is well below 1. Despite modest economic effects over the entire sample period, we find that federal Medicaid assistance provided powerful fiscal stimulus to states after the Great Recession when the implied multiplier exceeded 1.

Kaldor called the constancy of certain ratios stylized facts, Klein and Kosobud called them great ratios. While they often appear in theoretical models, the empirical literature finds little evidence for them, perhaps because the procedures used cannot deal with lack of co‐integration, two‐way causality, and cross‐country error dependence. We propose a new system pooled mean group estimator that can deal with these features. Monte Carlo results show it performs well compared with other estimators, and using it on a dataset over 150 years and 17 countries, we find support for five of the seven ratios considered.