Social capital and monetary policy

The U.S. have experienced a significant decline in generalized trust over the past three decades. Has this secular trend impacted central banking? Empirically, we document that states with high levels of institutional and interpersonal trust are robustly more responsive to monetary policy shocks. Theoretically, we embed a circle of trust block into the New Keynesian framework in continuous time. The calibrated model predicts that monetary policy has become 20% less effective due to the decline in trust. Our findings firm up the social capital channel of monetary non-neutrality and warn that crises of trust could lead to crises of policy inefficac

The Anatomy of Cyber Risk

We construct novel text-based measures of firm-level cyber risk exposure based on quarterly earnings calls of 12,000+ firms from 85 countries over 20+ years. We categorize each cyber-related discussion into topics that capture sentiment, monetary loss, country names, etc. We document new facts on the worldwide rise of cyber risk and its industrial and geographical composition. We characterize most affected firms and show that our indices can predict future cyberattacks. Cyber risk exposure has significant direct and contagion effects on stock returns. Finally, there is a factor structure in our firm-level measures and shocks to the common factor are priced

The regional Keynesian Cross

We study monetary policy transmission across space. Empirically, we show that two channels explain a sizable portion of the variation in the regional effects of identified U.S. monetary policy shocks: local marginal propensities to consume (MPCs), as captured by household wealth, and industry composition, as measured by the local share of non-tradable employment. Theoretically, we develop a heterogeneous agents New Keynesian (HANK) model of a monetary union with two-layered regional heterogeneity in household and industry composition. We provide a sequence-space characterization of the response of local employment to unexpected changes in interest rates as a function of intertemporal MPCs and industry composition: the regional Keynesian cross. Central to our theory is an equilibrium complementarity between these two sources of regional heterogeneity. We provide direct empirical evidence of this household industry complementarity, thus validating our key model mechanism. Quantitatively, reactions from fiscal authorities and the rest of the nation are key determining factors of the aggregate regional economic response