Jay Shambaugh

In this analysis, Jay Shambaugh provides evidence to help interpret forthcoming releases of inflation data as they begin to capture the impact of the COVID-19 downturn.

The COVID-19 public health crisis, the economic shock triggered by the pandemic, and public policy, business, and individual responses to the pandemic together have provoked the sharpest and fastest economic downturn in U.S. history. Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh discuss how the current crisis fits into historic context and what will be the long-lasting economic consequences. 

Since the March Employment Situation, the number of respondents reporting as "employed but absent from work due to other reasons" has risen as a share of the labor force. In this blog, Lauren Bauer, Wendy Edelberg, Jimmy O'Donnell, and Jay Shambaugh explore the nature and magnitude of this phenomenon and analyze who these "potentially misclassified" respondents are.

Improving labor productivity is important to sustain economic output and power long-run growth—yet productivity growth has generally declined over the past half century. Emily Moss, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh consider explanations for the slowdown in productivity growth as well as the public policies that can help restore it.

On Monday, June 8, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth hosted a webcast discussing the importance of expanding aid to state and local governments as part of the continued fiscal policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this analysis, Ryan Nunn, Jimmy O'Donnell, and Jay Shambaugh consider several policy options that could help boost workers’ wages. The authors also provide a categorization of which workers qualify as essential—performing functions society urgently needs that must be done in person—and then detail their incomes and their demographic characteristics.

The rapid contraction of the economy this spring has shattered records for the speed of onset of a recession. One of the most economically important pieces of the nearly $3 trillion policy response has been the rapid expansion of unemployment insurance (UI). Our preliminary calculations suggest that UI offset a small portion of personal income loss in March 2020, but roughly half of lost wages and salaries in April.

This blog post and video explain how existing emissions policies could be updated once a sufficiently high carbon price is in place. They also underscore the importance of suspending—not repealing—regulations, in the event that a carbon price is later rolled back.

In this blog post, Hamilton Project Director Jay Shambaugh argues for the use of economic data-based triggers to ensure appropriate fiscal support that aligns with economic conditions. These triggers will allow for quick policy activation, faster implementation facilitated by pre-planning, and sustained policy support that lasts as long as needed.

This interactive allows users to find out how many people and SNAP households lived in places that would have lost the protection of a SNAP work requirement waiver during the Great Recession (in 2009) and during an expansion (in 2018) had the Trump Administration's final rule been in place.

If the COVID-19 pandemic can be controlled, good policy may be able to steer to a quick return from the economic shock. Policymakers have already stepped up, but they will need to do more to prevent this recession from causing even more damage.

On Wednesday, April 1, from 3:00-4:00 p.m., The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution hosted a webcast discussing UI during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it can reduce the impact of the economic downturn.