Economic Policy Commons^™

Lessons Learned: Seth Carpenter, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Seth Carpenter was a senior staff member of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board during the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), meaning he was part of the team that advised the Board of Governors and members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in setting monetary policy. He led the Board team that worked daily with the Open Market Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to implement policy. He left the Federal Reserve System as deputy director of monetary affairs in 2014 to work at the US Department of the Treasury, where …

Lessons Learned: Tim Clark, Lynnley Browning

Journal of Financial Crises

During the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09, Tim Clark was senior adviser in the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Clark was a chief architect of the Federal Reserve’s capital and liquidity stress tests that helped to stabilize the banks. He was also one of the leaders behind the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act and other reforms at the Federal Reserve, and ultimately served as deputy director of the Division for Supervision and Regulation. This abstract is based on an interview with Clark that occurred on December 13, 2019.

Lessons Learned: John Bovenzi, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

As a deputy to the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and in his role as chief operating officer of the agency, John Bovenzi provided policy advice and oversaw the agency’s operations, including business lines, bank supervision, bank closings, deposit insurance, and administrative affairs. Bovenzi’s most notable role during the Global Financial Crisis was manning the helm of mortgage lender IndyMac after the FDIC took it over in July 2008 to position it for a sale. This abstract is based on an interview with Bovenzi conducted on December 2, 2020

The Internal Capital Markets Of Global Dealer Banks, Arun Gupta

Journal of Financial Crises

This study uncovers the existence of a trillion-dollar internal capital market that played a central role in the financing of dealer banks during the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis. Hand-collecting a novel set of dealer microdata at the subsidiary level, I present a unique set of facts on the evolution of inter-affiliate loans between US primary dealers and their (primarily foreign) siblings. First, the aggregate size of these dealer internal capital markets quadrupled from $335 billion in 2001 to $1.2 trillion by 2007. Second, 25 percent of total repurchase agreements and 62 percent of total securities lending reported on US primary …

Managing External Volatility: Policy Frameworks In Non-Reserve-Issuing Economies, Hélène Poirson, Nathan Porter, Ghada Fayad, Itai Agur, Ran Bi, Jiaqian Chen, Johannes Eugster, Stefan Laseen, Jeta Menkulasi, Kenji Moriyama, Céline Rochon, Katsiaryna Svirydzenka, Camilo Tovar, Zhongxia Zhang, Aleksandra Zdzienicka

Journal of Financial Crises

Since the Global Financial Crisis, non-reserve-issuing economies (NREs) have been highly sensitive to episodes of external pressures. With monetary policy independence constrained by this sensitivity, many NREs have utilized other policy instruments. This paper confirms the vulnerability of NREs to external shocks and finds that, in some circumstances, managing such shocks with multiple instruments can both lessen the policy response required from any one policy tool to financial and external shocks and increase the effectiveness of policies in stabilizing macrofinancial conditions. Effectiveness, however, does not always imply appropriateness, which rests on an evaluation of potential trade-offs and unintended consequences.

From Lost Turnover To Nonperforming Loans: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On The Economy And On The Financial System, Antonio Sánchez Serrano

Journal of Financial Crises

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented economic shock across the world. As a result of the coronavirus outbreak and the related health measures, nonfinancial corporations providing nonessential goods or services that cannot be consumed remotely have experienced a large decrease in their turnover. Using balance sheets and flows statements, we are able to quantify the impact of the pandemic on nonfinancial corporations and households, according to several scenarios for the pandemic over 2021. The impact is largely heterogeneous across sectors and amounts to up to 20% of the turnover for euro area nonfinancial corporations. Stress in these corporations and households …

Financial Crises And Legislation, Peter Conti-Brown, Michael Ohlrogge

Journal of Financial Crises

Scholars frequently assert that financial legislation in the United States is primarily crisis driven. This “crisis-legislation hypothesis” is often cited as an explanation for various supposed shortcomings of US financial legislation, including that it is poorly conceived and inadequate to the problems it aims to address. Other scholars embrace the hypothesis, but from the perspective that crises are the needed impetus to prompt constructive reforms. Despite the prevalence of this hypothesis, however, its threshold assumption—that Congress passes major financial legislation only when financial crises arise—has never been analyzed empirically. This article provides that analysis. We first devise a new system …

Democratizing The Economy Or Introducing Economic Risk? Gig Work During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Daniel Auguste, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

Though the growth of the gig economy has coincided with increased economic precarity in the new economy, we know less about the extent to which gig work (compared with other self-employment arrangements and non-gig work) may fuel economic insecurity among American households. We fill this gap in the literature drawing on a sample of 4,756 workers from a unique national survey capturing economic hardships among non-standard workers like app-and platform-based gig and other self-employed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from generalized boosted regression modeling, utilizing machine learning to account for potential endogeneity, demonstrated that gig workers experienced significantly greater …

Usage And Impact Of Benefits Among Frontline Healthcare Workers, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

We completed a study about frontline healthcare workers – the benefits they get through work and how they are doing financially. This brief provides highlights from our survey to 2,321 workers and interviews with 30 workers.

Revitalizing The Puerto Rican Economy After Hurricane Maria, Aditya Mehta

The Cardinal Edge

Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean that is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. It is naturally beautiful and caters heavily to tourists. However, it is currently in the midst of an economic crisis that has been building for years and is struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Additionally, popular culture and statistics have demonstrated that many Puerto Ricans are emigrating from the island. Puerto Rico must address these issues to ensure that its citizens can continue to have a good quality of life on the island. To do this, the U.S. government must work …

Is Fed Policy In The Eye Of The Beholder?, Leo Krippner, Thomas Lam

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

While the US Federal Reserve remains vigilant on inflation, it will likely continue its tightening cycle with caution, with an eye on market expectations about future policy actions and financial conditions.

The Gender Wage Gap In The Mountain West, Annie Vong, Katie M. Gilbertson, Katie Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on the gender wage gap, or the discrepancy in pay between female and male workers, in Mountain West metros. The Pew Research Center report, “Young Women are Out-Earning Young Men in Several U.S. Cities,” includes data on the gender wage gap for people under the age of 30 in various metropolitan areas across the United States in 2019. The Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey explores male and female occupational earnings by job sector for workers 16 and over.

Combatting Rising Healthcare Costs For Healthier Adults, Alejandra Muñoz-Rivera

Social Policy Institute Research

In 2020, healthcare expenditures averaged $12,530 per person, up 9.7% from 2019. In 2018, 19% of U.S. households had medical debt with $2,000 being the median amount owed. Over half of adults between 18 to 64 years of age are estimated to experience some form of medical financial hardship including medical bills or debt, stress about medical bills, and delaying or forgoing treatment specifically due to cost. In a 2022 survey of 140 Medicaid and Marketplace members by researchers from the Social Policy Institute (SPI) and the Centene Center of Health Transformation, one-third of respondents reported having unpaid medical bills. …

A Qualitative Look Into Repair Practices, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This research poster is based on a working research paper which moves beyond the traditional scope of repair and examines the Right to Repair movement from a smaller, more personal lens by detailing the 6 categorical impediments as dubbed by Dr. Alissa Centivany (design, law, economic/business strategy, material asymmetry, informational asymmetry, and social impediments) have continuously inhibited repair and affected repair practices, which has consequently had larger implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) on ourselves, our objects, and our world. The poster builds upon my research from last year (see "The Right to Repair: (Re)building a better future"), this time pulling …

Housing Availability In Nevada, 2017-2022, Annie Vong, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data on housing availability across nine Nevada counties from 2017 to 2022. Eight Nevada counties are not represented in this fact sheet due to a lack of data in the original report. The original report by MarketWatch analyzes housing inventory from 2017 to 2022 and median list prices in 2022 across counties in the United States.

Death On The Job: Mountain West States, 2022, Miguel A. Soriano Ralston, Joshua Padilla, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines select data from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) 2022 report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” which reports on worker safety, health, and workplace fatalities. The original report provides a comprehensive national and state-by-state profile of workplace conditions in the United States. These data were originally reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This fact sheet highlights workforce fatalities and injuries in the Mountain West region (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

Renewable Energy Legislation In Nevada: 2017 - 2021, Peter Grema, Zachary Walusek, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

The purpose of this fact sheet is to summarize legislative actions from the biennial 79th, 80th, and 81st Nevada Legislative Sessions (2017, 2019, and 2021) regarding solar energy production and state efforts to reach 50 percent energy production from renewable sources by 2030. By 2050, Nevada has a statutorily mandated obligation to be a net-zero carbon producer in fulfilling energy production needs from large scale utility services.

Cbe Waves Newsletter: August 2022, Various

Newsletters

The Summer 2022 Center for the Blue Economy Waves Newsletter includes the following articles:

• A "How To" Guide for Creating Ocean GDP Accounts for NON-Economists
• The hidden landscape: Maritime cultural heritage of the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges with implications for conservation on the high seas
• Introducing the 2022 Center for the Blue Economy Summer Fellows
• Virtual Reality to the Rescue--two new climate change applications
• Celebrating the Biden-Harris Whole-of-Government Ocean Climate Action Plan
• Celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act--biggest spending on climate change in US history
• Student and alumni profiles
• Out of the Arctic podcast created by IEP MIIS student …

The Belt And Road Initiative Policy: How Chinese Policy Influences Southeast Asia And South Asia, Chendong Wang

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

This article would be divided into two main parts. In the first part, this article introduces what is the BRI policy and the history of the BRI policy. The BRI policy is a Chinese strategy and network to connect with Chinese partners and potential partners through economic, political, and cultural three perspectives. In the second part, this article describes the BRI policy development and the response from Chinese neighboring countries which mainly include the Southeast and South Asian Countries. Southeast Asian nations and south Asian nations would first be directly impacted by politics, the economy, and culture. Southeast Asian countries …

The Conditional Mode In Parametric Frontier Models, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yi Yang

Center for Policy Research

We survey formulations of the conditional mode estimator for technical inefficiency in parametric stochastic frontier models with normal errors and introduce new formulations for models with Laplace errors. We prove the conditional mode estimator converges pointwise to the true inefficiency value as the noise variance goes to zero. We also prove that the conditional mode estimator in the normal-exponential model achieves near-minimax optimality. Our minimax theorem implies that the worst-case risk occurs when many firms are nearly efficient, and the conditional mode estimator minimizes estimation risk in this case by estimating these small inefficiency firms as efficient. Unlike the conditional …