Do state-dependent local projections asymptotically recover the population responses of macroeconomic aggregates to structural shocks? The answer to this question depends on how the state of the economy is determined and on the magnitude of the shocks. When the state is exogenous, the local...

We exploit the 1998 and 2003 constitutional amendment in Texas—allowing home equity loans and lines of credit for non-housing purposes—as natural experiments to estimate the effect of easier credit access on the labor market. Using state-level as well as county-level data and the...

This paper clarifies the conditions under which the state-of-the-art approach to identifying TFP news shocks in Kurmann and Sims (2021, KS) identifies not only news shocks but also surprise shocks. We examine the ability of the KS procedure to recover responses to these shocks from data...

In this reply to a comment by Jentsch and Lunsford, we show that, when focusing on the relevant impulse responses, the evidence for economic and statistically significant macroeconomic effects of tax changes in Mertens and Ravn (2013) remains present for a range of asymptotically valid inference...

This note uses existing empirical estimates of the macroeconomic effects of tax changes to project the near term impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on US GDP growth. Applying recent reduced form estimates of tax multipliers with the projected revenue impact of the Act yields a level of GDP that...

We document the forecasting gains achieved by incorporating measures of signed, finite and infinite jumps in forecasting the volatility of equity prices, using high-frequency data from 2000 to 2016. We consider the SPY and 20 stocks that vary by sector, volume and degree of jump activity. We use...

Wealth inequality in the U.S., measured by the top 1% wealth share, experienced dramatic changes in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic theory suggests that the key to understanding wealth inequality is heterogeneity in the return to net worth across households. To understand the...

The empirical effects of place-based tax incentive schemes designed to aid low-income communities are unclear. While a growing number of studies find beneficial effects on employment, there is little investigation into other behaviors of households affected by such programs. We analyze the...

Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for...

The Housing Provident Fund (HPF) is the largest public housing program in China. It was created in 1999 to enhance homeownership. This program involves a mandatory saving scheme based on labor income. Past deposits are refunded when the worker purchases a house or retires. Moreover, the program...