We provide evidence on narratives about the macroeconomy-the stories people tell to explain macroeconomic phenomena-in the context of a historic surge in inflation. In surveys with more than 10,000 US households and 100 academic experts, we measure economic narratives in open-ended survey...

We provide evidence for an expectation gap, where risk-averse as well as impatient households and experts provide significantly higher prior inflation forecasts. Using a survey randomized control trial (RCT), we can show that information about inflation forecasts closes this expectations gap....

This paper leverages a novel survey among German senior government officials to investigate fiscal responses to monetary policy shocks. Using randomized vignette treatments, we present officials with scenarios of increased government interest costs and analyze their expected fiscal adjustments....

This paper empirically quantifies the importance of fiscal policy in shaping the monetary policy transmission mechanism and derives implications for monetary-fiscal interactions. First, we document that a contractionary monetary policy shock, besides lowering output and prices, leads to a...

We investigate how the level of corporate leverage affects firms' investment response to monetary policy shocks. Based on novel aggregate time series estimates, leverage acts amplifying, whereas in the cross section of firms, higher leverage predicts a muted response to monetary policy. We use a...

This paper examines how carry trade activity affects the transmission of monetary policy in currency markets. It analyzes a set of developed and emerging market currencies against the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar appreciates in response to a conventional monetary policy shock but depreciates to...

Since the 2001 recession, average core inflation has been below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. This deflationary bias is a predictable consequence of a symmetric monetary policy strategy that fails to recognize the risk of encountering the zero-lower-bound. An asymmetric rule according to...

This paper aims at an improved understanding of the relationship between monetary policy and racial inequality. We investigate the distributional effects of monetary policy in a unified framework, linking monetary policy shocks both to earnings and wealth differentials between black and white...

Expectations about economic variables vary systematically across genders. In the domain of inflation, women have persistently higher expectations than men. We argue that traditional gender roles are a significant factor in generating this gender expectations gap as they expose women and men to...