The Federal Reserve’s “Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy”—commonly referred to as its monetary policy framework—is composed of guiding principles the central bank uses in setting and communicating policy. Since the Fed last updated this framework in 2020, the global economy has faced unique challenges: COVID-19 shutdowns, widespread supply chain issues, and multiple global wars. In 2025, the Fed Board will be tasked with reviewing the framework, identifying what has worked well and what hasn’t, and updating it accordingly. On this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity, David Wessel sits down with Brian Sack and Christina Romer, both former policymakers and authors of new research on the Fed framework's successes and shortfalls.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

The clean energy transition has quietly pushed ahead in recent decades, with solar and wind energy accounting for almost 15% of total U.S. energy production in February 2024. The benefits of this transition on climate change have been celebrated, but less acknowledged have been the potential economic benefits. In a new paper, “The economic impacts of clean power,” Costas Arkolakis and Conor Walsh explain how cheaper electricity resulting from this transition could lead to a 2-3% increase in national wages. On this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity, Walsh discusses his research with Sanjay Patnaik, director of Brookings’s Center on Regulation and Markets.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

Fiscal deficit projections are used by policymakers to understand the trajectory of U.S. debt. Between 1984 and 2003, Congress was responsive to these projections, raising taxes and cutting spending when projections showed that the deficit would grow. However, since 2004, fiscal policy has ceased being responsive to debt projections regardless of the party in power. In a new paper, “Robust Fiscal Stabilization,” Alan Auerbach and Danny Yagan of the University of California, Berkeley, quantify this phenomenon by comparing fiscal legislation across the two periods. On this episode, Auerbach discusses the findings and their implications with Brookings Senior Fellow William Gale.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

When Congress considers legislation, nonpartisan agencies provide estimates of the law’s potential economic effects to policymakers, a process known as “scoring.” In recent decades, analysts at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation have developed models that incorporate complex feedback effects, going beyond conventional scoring techniques. These “dynamic scoring” methods can produce significantly different estimates of a law’s economic impact, but there are tradeoffs in applying them in different policy areas. On this episode Doug Elmendorf and Glenn Hubbard join Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project, for a discussion on the costs and benefits of dynamic scoring.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

Since 2022, Western nations have put a number of sanctions on Russia in response to its war in Ukraine. Policymakers and pundits have debated the efficacy of these measures, but this debate is belied by a deeper question: what does it mean for sanctions to “work”? In new BPEA research, Oleg Itskhoki of Harvard and Elina Ribakova of the Peterson Institute for International Economics explore fundamental questions of the theory and practice of sanctions in the Russia context. On this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity, Ben Harris, director of Economic Studies at Brookings, joins the authors for a discussion on what’s next for Russia and developing a doctrine of economic statecraft.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

The full-employment rate of unemployment may seem like a contradiction, but in fact, economists have long understood that some unemployment is necessary. In their new paper, Pascal Michaillat of UC Santa Cruz and Saez of the University of California, Berkeley present a new formula for identifying the efficient rate of unemployment in the U.S. and find that the labor market has been inefficiently slack for most of the last century. In this episode, Michaillat discusses the paper and potential impacts on macroeconomic theory and policy with Brookings Senior Fellow Louise Sheiner.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

As COVID-19 swept across the globe, many nations struggled to define a cohesive public health strategy to prevent the spread of the disease. However, in spite of the lack of a clear plan, improvised strategies of behavioral changes—e.g., masking, social distancing—slowed transmission until a vaccine could be developed. The new BPEA paper, “The impact of vaccines and behaviors on U.S. cumulative deaths from COVID-19,” estimates that the ad hoc strategy prevented close to 800,000 deaths. On this episode, epidemiologist and paper co-author Stephen Kissler talks with Brookings Senior Fellow Carol Graham about the model they used to study COVID-19's impacts and what can be done to improve the government response to future pandemics.

This is the final episode of season four of the podcast.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

The failure of three mid-sized banks in March 2023—three of the four largest bank failures in history—shook financial markets and could’ve spread to other banks if regulators hadn’t stepped in. Two on-going trends in finance contributed to these failures: an increase in uninsured deposits and the migration of business lending to non-banks. In a new paper, “The evolution of banking in the 21st century,” a group of Harvard researchers looked at regulations that could mitigate risks going forward as well as the potential implications for mergers and acquisitions among mid-sized banks. David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, hears from two of the authors, Samuel Hanson and Daniel Tarullo, on their findings in this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity.

Show notes and transcript

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.