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13 Results

The (Mis)Allocation of Corporate News

Staff Working Paper 2024-47 Xing Guo, Alistair Macaulay, Wenting Song
We study how the distribution of information supply by the news media affects the macroeconomy. We find that media coverage focuses particularly on the largest firms, and that firms’ equity financing and investment increase after media coverage. But these equity and investment responses are largest among small, rarely covered firms. Our quantitative studies highlight that the aggregate effects of media coverage depend crucially on how that coverage is allocated.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Firm dynamics JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, D6, D61, L, L1, L11, L2, L20

An Anatomy of Firms’ Political Speech

Staff Working Paper 2024-37 Pablo Ottonello, Wenting Song, Sebastian Sotelo
We study the distribution of political speech across U.S. firms. We develop a measure of political engagement based on firms’ communications (earning calls, regulatory filings, and social media) by training a large language model to identify statements that contain political opinions. Using these data, we document five facts about firms’ political engagement.

Consumer Credit Regulation and Lender Market Power

Staff Working Paper 2024-36 Zachary Bethune, Joaquín Saldain, Eric R. Young
We investigate the welfare consequences of consumer credit regulation in a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model with endogenous lender market power. Lenders post credit offers and borrowers—some informed and others uninformed—apply for credit. We calibrate the model to match characteristics of the unsecured consumer credit market and use the calibrated model to evaluate interest rate ceilings.

Housing Affordability and Parental Income Support

In many countries, the cost of housing has greatly outpaced income growth, leading to a housing affordability crisis. Leveraging Canadian loan-level data and quasi-experimental variation in payment-to-income constraints, we document an increasing reliance of first-time homebuyers on financial help from their parents, through mortgage co-signing. We show that parental support can effectively relax borrowing constraints—potentially to riskier borrowers.

Stagflation and Topsy-Turvy Capital Flows

Staff Working Paper 2022-46 Julien Bengui, Louphou Coulibaly
Unregulated capital flows are likely excessive during a stagflation episode, owing to a macroeconomic externality operating through the economy’s supply side. Inflows raise domestic wages and cause unwelcome upward pressure on firm costs, yet market forces likely generate such inflows. Optimal capital flow management instead requires net outflows.

Income Inequality in Canada

Staff Discussion Paper 2022-16 Sarah Burkinshaw, Yaz Terajima, Carolyn A. Wilkins
Data show that income inequality in Canada increased substantially during the 1980s and first half of the 1990s but has been relatively stable over the past 25 years. This increase was felt mainly by low-income earners and younger people, while older people benefited from higher retirement income.

Are Bank Bailouts Welfare Improving?

Staff Working Paper 2021-56 Malik Shukayev, Alexander Ueberfeldt
Financial sector bailouts, while potentially beneficial during a crisis, might lead to excessive risk taking if anticipated. Taking expectations and aggregate risk implications into account, we show that bailouts can be welfare improving, but only if capital adequacy constraints are sufficiently tight.

Identifying Consumer-Welfare Changes when Online Search Platforms Change Their List of Search Results

Staff Working Paper 2020-5 Ryan Martin
Online shopping is often guided by search platforms. Consumers type keywords into query boxes, and search platforms deliver a list of products. Consumers' attention is limited, and exhaustive searches are often impractical.

A Macroprudential Theory of Foreign Reserve Accumulation

Staff Working Paper 2019-43 Fernando Arce, Julien Bengui, Javier Bianchi
This paper proposes a theory of foreign reserves as macroprudential policy. We study an open-economy model of financial crises in which pecuniary externalities lead to overborrowing, and show that by accumulating international reserves, the government can achieve the constrained-efficient allocation.

Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies

Staff Working Paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park
This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24
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