Employing a large number of financial indicators, we use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to forecast real-time measures of economic activity. The indicators include credit spreads based on portfolios--constructed directly from the secondary market prices of outstanding bonds--sorted by maturity...

The integrated macroeconomic accounts (IMAs), produced jointly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), present a sequence of accounts that relate income, saving, investment in real and financial assets, and asset revaluations to changes in net worth. In this...

This paper uses US state panel data to explore the relationship between the share of income received by affluent households and the level of income and earnings received by low and middle-income families. A rising top share of income can potentially lead to increases in the incomes of low and...

This paper develops a competitive equilibrium model of CEO compensation and industry dynamics. CEOs make product pricing and product improvement decisions subject to shareholders' compensation choices and idiosyncratic shocks to product quality. The choice of high-powered incentives optimally...

This paper examines the labor market for CEOs in the financial sector from 1988 to 2007, using a new hand-collected sample of 1,655 CEO successions. We document that there is a significant role of outside successions, as about one out of two successions involves an outside hire. In addition,...

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale dollar funding, while raising...

There are large differences between the microeconometeric estimates of the Frisch labor supply elasticity (0-0.5) and the values used by macroeconomists to calibrate general equilibrium models (2-4). The microeconometric estimates of the Frisch are typically estimated by regressing changes in...

After the run up in debt-to-GDP ratios around the world in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the associated lower fiscal space, the question of prudent fiscal consolidation is back on the agenda. In this paper, I study the macroeconomic implications of fiscal consolidation triggered by...

This paper uses a two country DSGE model to examine the effects of tax-based versus expenditure-based fiscal consolidation in a currency union. We find three key results. First, given limited scope for monetary accommodation, tax-based consolidation tends to have smaller adverse effects on...

We seek to quantify the impact on euro area GDP of the European Economic Recovery Plan (EERP) enacted in response to the financial crisis of 2008-09. To do so, we estimate an extended version of the ECB’s New Area-Wide Model with a richly specified fiscal sector. The estimation results point...