A Concern Analysis of FOMC Statements Comparing The Great Recession and The COVID-19 Pandemic

Real-Time Real Economic Activity: Entering and Exiting the Pandemic Recession of 2020

Entering and exiting the Pandemic Recession, I study the high-frequency real-activity signals provided by a leading nowcast, the ADS Index of Business Conditions produced and released in real time by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. I track the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs and compare them to a later-vintage chronology. Real-time ADS plunges and then swings as its underlying economic indicators swing, but the ADS paths quickly converge to indicate a return to brisk positive growth by mid-May. I show, moreover, that the daily real activity path was highly correlated with the …

Pandemic Recession and Helicopter Money: Venice, 1629--1631

We analyse the money-financed fiscal stimulus implemented in Venice during the famine and plague of 1629--31, which was equivalent to a 'net-worth helicopter money' strategy -- a monetary expansion generating losses to the issuer. We argue that the strategy aimed at reconciling the need to subsidize inhabitants suffering from containment policies with the desire to prevent an increase in long-term government debt, but it generated much monetary instability and had to be quickly reversed. This episode highlights the redistributive implications of the design of macroeconomic policies and the rol…

Changes in Retirement Savings During the COVID Pandemic

This paper documents changes in retirement saving patterns at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We construct a large panel of U.S. tax data, including tens of millions of person-year observations, and measure retirement savings contributions and withdrawals. We use these data to document several important changes in retirement savings patterns during the pandemic relative to the years preceding the pandemic or the Great Recession. First, unlike during the Great Recession, contributions to retirement savings vehicles did not meaningfully decline. Second, driven by the suspension of required m…

美国铁路与多式联运货运对 COVID-19 疫情与“大衰退”的响应对比如何？

How Well Did U.S. Rail and Intermodal Freight Respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic vs. the Great Recession?

本文比较了美国铁路货运在 COVID-19 疫情与“大衰退”期间的表现，发现疫情虽造成急剧下降但五个月内近完全恢复，凸显了铁路货运的韧性。

Tracking GDP in real-time using electricity market data: insights from the first wave of COVID-19 across Europe

This paper develops a methodology for tracking in real time the impact of shocks (such as natural disasters, financial crises or pandemics) on gross domestic product (GDP) by analyzing high-frequency electricity market data. As an illustration, we estimate the GDP loss caused by COVID-19 in twelve European countries during the first wave of the pandemic. Our results are almost indistinguishable from the official statistics of the recession during the first two quarters of 2020 (correlation coefficient of 0.98) and are validated by several robustness tests. However, they are also more chronolog…

Real-time estimation of the short-run impact of COVID-19 on economic activity using electricity market data

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 8 million confirmed cases and 500,000 death to date. In response to this emergency, many countries have introduced a series of social-distancing measures including lockdowns and businesses' temporary shutdowns, in an attempt to curb the spread of the infection. Accordingly, the pandemic has been generating unprecedent disruption on practically every aspect of society. This paper demonstrates that high-frequency electricity market data can be used to estimate the causal, short-run impact of COVID-19 on the economy. In the current uncertain economic con…