{"title":"Understanding the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Women","authors":"Claudia Goldin","doi":"10.3386/w29974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w29974","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Compared with previous recessions, the recession induced by COVID-19 had a greater impact on women's employment and labor force participation relative to men. But the big divide was less between men and women than it was between the more and the less educated. Contrary to many accounts, women did not exit the labor force in large numbers, and they did not greatly decrease their hours of work. The aggregate female labor force participation rate did not plummet. That said, the ability to balance caregiving and work differed greatly by education, occupation, and race. The more educated could work from home. Those who began the period employed in various in-person service occupations and establishments experienced large reductions in employment. Black women experienced a more negative impact beyond other factors considered, and the health impact of COVID-19 is a probable reason. The estimation of the pandemic's impact depends on the counterfactual used. The real story of women during the pandemic is that employed women who were educating their children and working adult daughters who were caring for their parents were stressed because they were in the labor force, not because they left.","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86242592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Budgetary Implications of Economic Scenarios with Higher and Lower Interest Rates","authors":"P. Swagel","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper illustrates how the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) July 2021 baseline budget projections would have differed if the agency had used two alternative economic scenarios. The high-sixth scenario is based on the average values of projections for several variables—including inflation and the growth of gross domestic product after removing the effects of inflation (real GDP)—from the six Blue Chip forecasters (about one-sixth of the total) with the highest average interest rate projections. The low-sixth scenario is based on the average values of projections for the same variables from the six Blue Chip forecasters with the lowest average interest rate projections. Using its simplified model of how macroeconomic changes would affect the federal budget, the CBO found that projected deficits would be $2.1 trillion larger from 2022 to 2031 under the high-sixth scenario (totaling $13.8 trillion) than under the low-sixth scenario ($11.7 trillion). Despite a greater amount of debt in dollar terms under the high-sixth scenario, federal debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP would total about 101 percent at the end of 2031 under both scenarios.","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74342182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comments and Discussion","authors":"Adam M. Guren, Joseph Gyourko","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"COMMENT BY GARY GORTON Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a blockchain-based set of smart contracts that executes financial transactions without a centralized authority. It relies on member agents jointly making decisions. It is a large and growing sector of crypto space that has the potential to significantly disrupt the financial sector. “Disruptive” in the sense of Christensen (2011), it is a new technology that will reduce or eliminate the need for some set of skills or technologies. For example, the advent of personal computers disrupted the typewriter market. So, the question is: Will DeFi significantly disrupt banking? Regulators and academics need to understand this space because while DeFi is only embryonic currently, it will grow and morph. Makarov and Schoar clearly and comprehensively summarize the ongoing developments, giving us an introduction to this space. Their overview is important because there is bewildering terminology that is little understood by many. It is important to keep in mind that we are in the very early days of blockchain, DeFi, smart contracts, and stablecoins. These early days are somewhat like these two examples: in 1899, there were 30 American car companies, and by the end of the next decade an additional 485 had started up. But this number dropped from 253 in 1908 to only 44 by 1929 and three companies—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—accounted for","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75744872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comments and Discussion","authors":"S. Albanesi, Jane Olmstead-Rumsey","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82708905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Panel on Fiscal Policy and Budget Deficits Following The Pandemic","authors":"Carmen M. Reinhart","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74976624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cryptocurrencies and Decentralized Finance (DeFi)","authors":"I. Makarov, A. Schoar","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.4098328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4098328","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The paper provides an overview of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance (DeFi). The discussion lays out potential benefits and challenges of the new system and presents a comparison to the traditional system of financial intermediation. Our analysis highlights that while the DeFi architecture might have the potential to reduce transaction costs, similar to the traditional financial system, there are several layers where rents can accumulate due to endogenous constraints to competition. We show that the permissionless and pseudonymous design of DeFi generates challenges for enforcing tax compliance and anti–money laundering laws and preventing financial malfeasance. We highlight ways to regulate the DeFi system which would preserve a majority of benefits of the underlying blockchain architecture but support accountability and regulatory compliance.","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91350020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Have They Been Thinking? Home Buyer Behavior in Hot and Cold Markets: A Ten-Year Retrospect","authors":"R. Shiller, Ann-Marie K. Thompson","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0012","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This is an update of a paper that we published with Karl E. Case in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity in 2012. The paper analyzes data from our annual questionnaire survey of US home buyers to understand their expectations for future home price changes. We again see a period of rapid price increase as we did in our surveys a decade ago. We find that home buyers were generally well informed, and their short-run expectations were conservative, typically underreacting to the year-to-year changes in actual home prices. Housing bubbles can be seen in their long-term (annualized ten-year) home price expectations. The long boom that preceded the 2007–2009 crisis was associated with changing public understanding of speculative bubbles. During the early years of this decade-long rebound, both short- and long-term expectations were out of line with actual changes in prices. Since 2013, long-term expectations have converged with short-term expectations and actual price changes in most locations, and all three series have moved in synch. With the onset of COVID-19, in 2021 actual and anticipated appreciation diverged once again. This time, however, short-term expectations surged above long-term expectations but remained far below actual appreciation rates. Buyers presumed a coming slowdown in the market that has yet to materialize.","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79308311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comments and Discussion","authors":"William A. Darity, Benjamin Moll","doi":"10.1353/eca.2022.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2022.0021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83238209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comments and Discussion","authors":"H. Shin","doi":"10.1353/eca.2021.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2021.0021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51405,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82123185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}