Louise Sheiner

If the debt limit binds, how would the U.S. Treasury operate? How much would federal spending have to be cut? How would the economy be affected? Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner explain the stakes and potential ramifications. 

On April 27 and 28, experts examined the economic policy response to COVID-19 and identified lessons for future recessions. Catch up with the recording.

In the United States, COVID-19 triggered a sharp economic downturn. Yet, the ensuing economic recovery was faster and stronger than nearly any forecaster anticipated due in part to the swift, aggressive, and creative fiscal and monetary policy response in the U.S. While the next recession most likely won’t be triggered by a pandemic, the response can be informed by lessons learned from the COVID-19 recession. 

Looks at the nearly $1 trillion that the federal government provided to state and local governments.

Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner delineate how the economy is likely to suffer lasting and avoidable damage should the debt limit bind.

Ten Senate Republicans recently proposed a $618-billion COVID relief package. In this piece, we provide an analysis of that package and update our analysis of the Biden Administration’s $1.9 trillion fiscal package, using the current-law GDP projections that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released on Monday.  

In this piece, Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner project the effect of the Biden package on GDP. They project that if the Biden package were enacted, GDP would reach the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) pre-pandemic GDP projection after the third quarter of 2021, exceeding it by 1 percent in the fourth quarter. In the middle of 2022, GDP would show a temporary and shallow decline and then grow at an annual rate of about 1.5 percent, coming close to the path projected just before the pandemic.

This analysis shows the effects on economic activity, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of illustrative versions of several policies. Specifically, researchers examine five policies: a second round of checks to households, a resumption of enhanced unemployment insurance benefits, aid to state and local governments, support for small businesses, and other forms of fiscal support.

Slowdowns in the economy are inevitable. While it may be tempting to rely on Federal Reserve policy as a lone response to recessions, this would be a mistake; we know that fiscal stimulus is effective. Rather than wait for a crisis to strike before designing discretionary fiscal policy, we would be better served by preparing in advance. Enacting evidence-based automatic stabilizer proposals before the next recession will help the next recovery start faster, make job creation stronger, and restore confidence to businesses and households.

Louise Sheiner and Michael Ng investigate the cyclicality of fiscal policy over the past 40 years, finding that fiscal policy has been increasingly countercyclical, with automatic stabilizers providing roughly half the stabilization. By contrast, state fiscal policy has been mildly procyclical.