Using a large-scale survey of U.S. consumers, we study how the large one-time transfers to individuals from the CARES Act affected their consumption, saving and labor-supply decisions. Most respondents report that they primarily saved or paid down debts with their transfers, with only about 15...

The expiration of the temporary $600 boost to weekly UI benefits under the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) led to a sharp, unprecedented, 98 percentage point reduction (on average) in the replacement rate during a time when employment was recovering during the Covid recession....

COVID-19 relief legislation offers a unique setting to study how political representation shapes the distribution of federal assistance to state and local governments. We provide evidence of a substantial small-state bias: an additional Senator or Representative per million residents predicts an...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government issued stimulus checks and expanded the child tax credit. These pandemic payments varied by marital status and the number of children in the household and were substantial with some families receiving several thousand dollars. We exploit this...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented levels of federal transfers to state governments. Did this funding increase benefit incumbent politicians electorally? Identifying the effect of revenue windfalls on voting is challenging because whatever conditions led to the influx of cash might also...

This paper uses the onset of COVID-19 to examine how countries construct their policy packages in response to a severe negative shock. We use several new datasets to track the use of a large variety of policy tools: announced fiscal stimulus (both above- and below-the-line), monetary policy...

Stimulus checks have become an increasingly important policy tool in recent U.S. recessions. How does the households' marginal propensity to spend (MPX) vary as checks become larger? To quantify this size-dependence in the MPX, we augment a canonical model of durable spending by introducing a...

The 2020 CARES Act directed large cash payments to households. We analyze house-holds' spending responses using high-frequency transaction data from a Fintech non-profit, exploring heterogeneity by income levels, recent income declines, and liquidity as well as linked survey responses about...

We revisit the role of temporary layoffs in the business cycle, motivated by their unprecedented surge during the pandemic recession. We first measure the contribution of temporary layoffs to unemployment dynamics over the period 1979 to the present. While many have emphasized a stabilizing...

Was the $278 billion reboot of the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in early 2021 disbursed equitably to minority communities? This paper provides the first analysis of how PPP funds were disbursed to minority communities in the third and final round of the program, which was...