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Mark E. Schweitzer |

Senior Vice President and Director of Research

Mark E. Schweitzer, Senior Vice President and Director of Research

Mark Schweitzer is a senior vice president and the director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. He leads the Bank's Research Department, setting the direction for economic research, selecting and developing staff, and briefing the Bank president prior to meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Schweitzer’s own research has focused on the macroeconomic impact of labor market developments and the identification of factors contributing to regional economic growth.

Dr. Schweitzer joined the Bank in 1992 as an economist. From 2000 to 2002, he served as a senior economist at the Bank of England. He returned to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and in 2004 was promoted to assistant vice president and director of the Regional Economic Issues Program. In 2007, Dr. Schweitzer was appointed vice president and branch executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Denver Branch. He was named to his current position in 2008.

An economics graduate of the University of Chicago, Dr. Schweitzer holds both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles. A native of Seattle, Washington, Dr. Schweitzer lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He is married and has two daughters and a son.

 

  • Fed Publications
  • Other Publications
Title Date Publication Author(s) Type

 

 October, 2012 ; Guhan Venkatu; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Many adjustable rate mortgages in the United States are indexed to Libor. While the accuracy of this rate has recently been called into question, another issue affecting U.S. borrowers has become evident since the onset of the financial crisis. Specifically, many U.S. consumers with Libor-based loans may have been hit with substantially higher payments when their loans reset during the financial crisis than if those loans had been tied to a Treasury rate. We investigate several alternative reference rates for consumer loans and estimate their payment effects on a large sample of Libor-linked U.S. mortgages. We find that these alternatives would have delivered savings over Libor of about $25 to $45 per month and substantially more for mortgages that reset in October 2008.
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 November, 2011 ; Scott Shane; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Is uncertainty causing small business owners to behave in ways that are hindering the recovery? That question is at the center of an intense public debate. Though reasonable arguments have been presented on both sides, there is not much empirical evidence to draw on. To contribute some to the discussion, we investigated the statistical association between data on small business plans to hire and make capital expenditures and a measure of policy uncertainty. Our analysis suggests that uncertainty is adversely affecting small business owners’ expansion plans.
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 September, 2011 ; Kyle Fee; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Economists have been arguing about the connection between unemployment and inflation for decades. Critics claim that the connection is unreliable and leads policymakers astray, while others argue that the relationship is useful for forecasting. We examine the more direct connections between elevated unemployment levels and the rate of increase in wage and labor costs more generally. We find that wage and labor cost growth has declined markedly following recent recessions and in the case of the current recovery, labor costs are likely to be a significant restraining force on inflation going forward.
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 May, 2011 Vol. 2, No. 2 ; Brent Meyer; Forefront
Abstract: It can be. In fact, it may even allow the Fed more room to pursue short-term output and employment stabilization.
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 December, 2010 ; Scott Shane; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Small businesses continue to report problems in obtaining the financing they need. Because small business owners may rely heavily on the value of their homes to finance their businesses (through mortgages or home equity lines), the fall in housing prices might be one of the causes of their difficulty. We analyze information from a variety of sources and find that homes do constitute an important source of capital for small business owners and that the impact of the recent decline in housing prices is significant enough to be a real constraint on small business finances.
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 January, 2009 ; Guhan Venkatu; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Adjustable-rate mortgages have typically been tied to either of two indexes, one based on U.S. treasuries, the other on the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The index is used to determine a mortgage’s new interest rate when it is reset, and up until recently, the choice would have made little difference. But since 2007, the rates on which the indexes are based have diverged sharply, and borrowers with Libor-based adjustable-rate mortgages are likely to pay more than they would have had their mortgages been tied to treasuries. Moreover, the proportion of Libor-based ARMs has increased significantly, especially for subprime loans.
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 February, 2007 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Brian Rudick; Economic Commentary
Abstract: News that Cleveland's poverty rate is the worst in the nation--and rising--has elevated the community's concern about conditions in the city. But a closer look at the way poverty rates are calculated suggests that all the possible causes of Cleveland's ranking have not been fully understood.
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 December, 2006 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0620 ; William T Dickens; Lorenz Goette; Erica L Groshen; Steinar Holden; Julian Messina; Jarkko Turunen; Melanie E Ward; Working Papers
Abstract: How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals' earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which we obtain a total of 360 wage change distributions. We find a remarkable amount of variation in wage changes across workers. Wage changes have a notably non-normal distribution; they are tightly clustered around the median and also have many extreme values. Furthermore, nearly all countries show asymmetry in their wage distributions below the median. Indeed, we find evidence of both downward nominal and real wage rigidities. We also find that the extent of both these rigidities varies substantially across countries. Our results suggest that variations in the extent of union presence in wage bargaining play a role in explaining differing degrees of rigidities among countries.
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 August, 2006 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Paul W Bauer; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Even as per capita income has increased across the United States, differences among states' incomes remain. What are the sources of these remaining differences? This Commentary identifies and analyzes the key factors-patents, educational attainment, and industry structure-that influence income-growth rates and thus per capita incomes. It also explores where the Fourth District falls in relation to other states and the country as a whole
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 May, 2006 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0606 ; Paul W Bauer; Scott Shane; Working Papers
Abstract: Real average U.S. per capita personal income growth over the last 65 years exceeded a remarkable 400 percent. Also notable over this period is that the stark income differences across states have narrowed considerably: In 1939 the highest income state's per capita personal income was 4.5 times the lowest, but by 1976 this ratio had fallen to less than 2 times. Since 1976, the standard deviation of per capita incomes at the state level has actually risen, as some higher-income states have seen their income levels rise relative to the median of the states. A better understanding of the sources of these relative growth performances should help to characterize more effective economic development strategies, if income growth differences are predictable. In this paper, we look for statistically and economically significant growth factors by estimating an augmented growth model using a panel of the 48 contiguous states from 1939 to 2004. Specifically, we control for factors that previous researchers have argued were important: tax burdens, public infrastructure, size of private financial markets, rates of business failure, industry structure, climate, and knowledge stocks. Our results, which are robust to a wide variety of perturbations to the model, are easily summarized: A state's knowledge stocks (as measured by its stock of patents and its high school and college attainment rates) are the main factors explaining a state's relative per capita personal income.
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 January, 2006 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Saeed Zaman; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Since the 1970s, productivity growth in the manufacturing sector has outpaced the overall economy, yet the sector's share of the workforce has declined dramatically. This leads us to ask if we are in fact engineering ourselves out of jobs. This Economic Commentary explores the relationship between productivity and employment and points out why this apparently straightforward relationship may be more complicated than it appears.
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 September, 2005 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0508 ; Richard D Barwell; Working Papers
Abstract: This paper analyzes the extent of rigidities in wage setting in Great Britain over the 1980s and 1990s. Our estimation strategy, which generalizes the work of Altonji and Devereux (2000), models the notional wage growth distribution--the distribution of nominal wage growth that would occur in the absence of rigidities in pay--while allowing for the presence of measurement error in the data. The model then allows for the possibility that the nominal wage growth of a fraction of the workforce may be subject to a nominal or real downward rigidity. Our model suggests that real rigidities in wage setting are more prevalent than nominal rigidities, although the incidence of these real wage rigidities has fallen gradually over time. If firms cannot cut real wages in response to negative demand shocks they may resort to laying off workers. Our results support this microfoundation of the wage-unemployment Phillips curve: Workers who are more likely to be protected from wage cuts are also more likely to lose their jobs.
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 December, 2004 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Working Paper no. 0412 ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Working Papers
Abstract: The primary goal of a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor families with members in the work force. We present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes from March CPS surveys. Using non-parametric estimates of the distributions of family income relative to needs in states and years with and without minimum wage increases, we examine the effects of minimum wages on this distribution, and on the distribution of the changes in income that families experience. Although minimum wages do increase the incomes of some poor families, the evidence indicates that their net effect is, if anything, to increase the proportions of families with incomes below or near the poverty line. Thus, it would appear that reductions in the proportions of families that are poor or near-poor should not be counted among the potential benefits of minimum wages.
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 May, 2004 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Guhan Venkatu; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Two government surveys are used to gather information about employment in the U.S. economy, but the employment levels calculated from each seem to provide conflicting pictures of the labor market. The surveys are very different, but when the differences are taken into account and the survey results are compared with their respective business-cycle patterns, the conflict disappears.
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 March, 2003 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Economic Commentary
Abstract: The expansion of the 1990s began with such unexpectedly slow employment growth that commentators called it the “jobless recovery.” As the economy now begins to expand after the most recent recession, will employment follow the typical path of most postwar recoveries, or will it repeat the pattern of the 1990s? A look at trends in employment, unemployment, and the labor force participation rate reveals important similarities to the 1990s jobless recovery. That said, one of the similarities is an unusually low unemployment rate, which suggests that the recovery might be better characterized as “jobseekerless.”
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 January, 2003 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0303 ; Working Papers
Abstract: The unemployment rate is commonly assumed to measure labor availability, but this ignores the fact that potential workers, the so-called inactive, frequently come from outside the current set of labor market participants. The UK Longitudinal Labor Force Survey includes information that can be used to predict impending employment transitions. Using this unique data set, new measures of labor availability, and indicators based on the more familiar unemployment rate alternatives, can be constructed and are reported here. The micro- and macroeconomic performances of these labor-force-availability measures are compared. Two simplified models, which include several categories of reasons for not working as well as demographic variables, perform particularly well in all of the tests. The implications of these preferred models are further studied in the context of regional regressions and comparisons with alternative data sources. These results together illustrate the important role that some groups of the inactive can play as a source of potential workers.
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 September, 2001 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Paul W Bauer; Jeffrey L Jensen; Economic Commentary
Abstract: This Economic Commentary confirms that productivity growth has been unusually robust over the last few years and explores reasonable assumptions about the likely future pattern of productivity growth. These assumptions can generate substantially different productivity growth paths. Government forecasts, which guide the major tax and benefit programs, have been increased in recent years yet remain cautious.
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 September, 2000 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Review, vol. 36. no. 3, pp. 2-12 ; Eric C Thompson; Economic Review
Abstract: Deregulation of electricity generation will offer consumers many advantages, including dramatically lower energy costs. From a macroeconomic viewpoint, electricity purchases are interesting because they are a major component of consumers' budgets (and thus of the CPI) and a large factor of production for many companies. This raises the possibility that electricity deregulation could create a substantial shock to the overall price trend, comparable to other recent energy shocks. The benefits to consumers and producers identified in this article strongly support legislative efforts to increase competition in one of the last strongholds of regulated profits.
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 April, 2000 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Policy Discussion Paper, no. 1 ; Gregory Hess; Policy Discussion Papers
Abstract: Recent attention has turned from unemployment levels to wage growth as an indicator of imminent inflation. But is there any evidence to support the assumption that increased wages cause inflation? This study updates and expands earlier research into this question and finds little support for the view that higher wages cause higher prices. On the contrary, the authors find more evidence that higher prices lead to wage growth.
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 June, 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Jennifer K Ransom; Economic Commentary
Abstract: How can we measure total employment in the economy? The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides two different—and sometimes contradictory—measures of this key indicator. During the 1990s, the gap between the two measures has widened to more than five million workers. This Economic Commentary examines the current discrepancy between the two measures of employment and explores its significance in interpreting our economy’s health.
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 February, 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Economic Commentary
Abstract: If enacted, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 1999 would raise the minimum wage an additional dollar over the next two years. But does the minimum wage really benefit the low-income families it purports to help?
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 January, 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9919 ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Working Papers
Abstract: Workers initially earning near the minimum wage are adversely affected by minimum wage increases, while, not surprisingly, higher-wage workers are little affected. Although the pay of low-wage workers increases, their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes is a decline in earned income.
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 January, 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9908 ; Erica L Groshen; Working Papers
Abstract: The paper proceeds as follows. First we describe the wage-setting process in large firms and discuss the reasons why wage change distributions may not be neutral with respect to inflation. Then we describe the data. The fourth section describes our main results on the distributional effects of inflation. To test for robustness, we also consider the impact of unemployment and changes in returns to education on wage-change 4 distributions. The fifth section investigates two policy-relevant questions: whether some jobs tend to be the first to respond to changes in inflation, and whether wage changes in the 1990s have deviated from historical patterns. The sixth section summarizes and concludes.
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 July, 1998 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Labor productivity growth is generally acknowledged to be procyclical. The author reviews the leading explanations for this, then uses two approaches to compare the time pattern of productivity gains over the business cycle. One approach describes the pattern in terms of the number of quarters of growth since the cycle's trough; the other uses knowledge about the ends of past recoveries to describe the typical pattern of productivity gains as a cycle ages.
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 June, 1998 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; John B Carlson; Economic Commentary
Abstract: The U.S. economy's recent extraordinary performance has led some to claim that trend output growth is accelerating to a much higher rate than any we have experienced in a quarter century; they also maintain that the signs of productivity's acceleration have been masked by measurement problems. The authors, however, find scant evidence to support such claims.
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 February, 1998 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Minimum wages help some families to escape poverty, but employment losses associated with raising the minimum also appear to cause some families to fall into poverty. The authors' estimates suggest that on balance, the second of these effects outweighs the first; therefore, the net result of raising the minimum wage is an increase in the proportion of poor families.
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 August, 1997 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Compares two possible explanations of why pay increases continue to be moderate in a vigorous labor market--workers' uncertainty about their jobs and human resource managers' wage-setting behavior--and looks at how each explanation matches the evidence on the timing of inflation and wage changes.
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 June, 1997 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Review, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 2-12 ; Economic Review
Abstract: A presentation of a model that incorporates many factors simultaneously -- including education, experience, and industry choice -- to explain the growing disparity in Americans' earnings. Its main finding is that the shifting composition of the U.S. workforce is a significant and direct determinant of the widening earnings gap.
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 January, 1997 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9705 ; Erica L Groshen; Working Papers
Abstract: An effort to distinguish inflation's distortionary effects from its facilitation of adjustments to shocks when wages are rigid downward. It uses the following identification strategy: Inflation-induced deviations among employers' mean wage changes represent unintended intramarket distortions (sand), while inflation-induced, interoccupational wage changes reflect adjustments that might have been prevented by nominal wage rigidity (grease).
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 October, 1996 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Review, vol 32, no. 4 ; Peter C Rupert; Eric K Severance-Lossin; Erin Turner; Economic Review
Abstract: The value of additional education is typically measured by the increase in earnings that results. The largest gains are realized on completion of a degree, whether high school, college, or post-graduate. Failure to correctly specify an empirical earnings function can lead to substantial bias. In this article, the authors show that a common misspecification-combining college graduates with post-graduates-may bias the returns to a college education upward by as much as 12 percent.
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 March, 1996 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Kristin M Roberts; Economic Commentary
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 January, 1996 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 9612 ; Eric K Severance-Lossin; Working Papers
Abstract: Earnings data are often reported in round numbers. In fact, in the March 1995 Current Population Survey (CPS), 71% of all full-time earnings responses are some multiple of $1,000. Rounding is typically ignored in analyses of earnings data, which effectively treats it as noise in the data. Our GMM estimates of a simple model of rounding indicate that this behavior is highly systematic and correlated with the respondents? earnings level. We find that the systematic nature of rounding can affect some commonly used statistics based on earnings data. The statistics we investigate in this analysis are inequality summary measures, earnings quantiles, kernel density estimates, and frequency plots of wage adjustments. We find that rounding alters most of these statistics substantially, that is, by more than the typical level of annual changes or reported standard errors.
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 January, 1996 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9611 ; Working Papers
Abstract: The large shift of U.S. employment from goods producers to service producers has generated concern over future income distribution, because of perceived large relative pay differences. This paper applies a nonparametric density overlap statistic to compare the sectors' distribution of full-time, weekly wages at all wage levels.
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 January, 1996 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9607 ; Erica L Groshen; Working Papers
Abstract: An exploration of the micro- and macroeconomic theories, implications, and evidence of wage rigidity from the perspective of human resource managers and economic researchers, showing that human resource policies can subtly alter the rigidity of wages.
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 February, 1995 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Max Dupuy; Economic Commentary
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 January, 1995 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9520 ; Max Dupuy; Working Papers
Abstract: An examination of the relative shapes of the wage distribution in the U.S. goods-producing and service-producing sectors that uses a nonparametric measure of density overlap to analyze wage differences between the two sectors over time. What implications do 21st century monetary innovations bring for holdings of central bank money and standards of value? Emerging technologies such as cybercash, e-cash, and smart cards can be expected to reduce demand for central bank money, but the theoretical framework for monetary policy has not changed.
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 August, 1994 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Kristin M Roberts; Economic Commentary
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 June, 1994 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Review, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 26-37 ; Randall W Eberts; Economic Review
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 February, 1994 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Max Dupuy; Economic Commentary
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 January, 1994 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9418 ; Erica L Groshen; Working Papers
Abstract: An analysis of whether inflation facilitates adjustments to shocks or distorts relative prices, examining the wage-setting process across a panel of occupations and employers and finding that the costs of inflation may rise more rapidly than its benefits beyond quite modest rates of increase in the price level.
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 May, 1993 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Adam D Werner; Economic Commentary
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 January, 1993 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 9314 ; Working Papers
Abstract: A general decomposition of earnings inequality is applied to the complete full-time labor force, including minorities and women. The results confirm that education premiums were the largest observable factor in the rise in earnings inequality in the 1980s, and also reveal an offsetting reduction in the role of race- and sex-related earnings differences.
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Title Date Publication Author(s) Type

 

 November, 2007 Economic Journal, November 2007, vol. 117, issue 524, p 553-69 ; Richard D Barwell; Journal Article
Abstract: This article analyzes the extent of rigidities in wage setting in Great Britain over the 1980s and 1990s. Our estimation strategy follows the generalized Altonji and Devereux (2000) model discussed in the introduction to this feature, but it includes modifications to include some special features of the British data. Our estimates reveal that real rigidities in wage setting are more prevalent than nominal rigidities in Great Britain, although the incidence of these real wage rigidities has fallen gradually over time. If firms cannot cut real wages in response to negative demand shocks they may resort to laying off workers. Our results support this microfoundation of the wage–unemployment Phillips curve: workers who are more likely to be protected from wage cuts are also more likely to lose their jobs.
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 April, 2007 Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2007, vol. 21, issue 2, pp. 195-214 ; William T Dickens; Lorenz Goette; Erica L Groshen; Steinar Holden; Julian Messina; Jarkko Turunen; Melanie E Ward; Journal Article
Abstract: Workers’ wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers—at least those who do not switch jobs—typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex set of institutions and factors such as contracts, unions, standards of fairness, minimum wage policy, transfers of risk, and incomplete information. The goal of the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP)—a consortium of over 40 researchers with access to individual workers’ earnings data for 16 countries—is to provide new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We investigate the extent of wage flexibility, with a particular focus on the extent of downward wage rigidity; and explore how measures of wage flexibility are affected by the wage-setting regimes that typically vary by country.
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The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Family Incomes: A Nonparametric Analysis

 

 October, 2005 Journal of Human Resources, pp 867-916. ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Journal Article
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The Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on the Distribution of Wages

 

 April, 2004 Journal of Human Resources, pp. 425-450. ; David Neumark; William Wascher; Journal Article
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 January, 2004 Bank of England Working Paper, no. 228 ; Working Paper, Other
Abstract: In this paper the extent to which recent patterns in UK labour force participation have been influenced by trend and business cycle factors is investigated. A modelling strategy is proposed that pools the available micro and aggregate-level data, to produce a mutually consistent model of the trend and cyclical components of participation. A significant procyclical pattern is established, but some distinct trend influences on the participation rate are also identified. The approach allows for the construction of forecasts, which would be a useful input into the sort of macroeconometric models used by policymakers. The model outperforms some conventional macroeconometric forecasts in out-of-sample forecast tests.
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Ready, Willing, and Able: Labor Availability in the UK

 

 January, 2003 Bank of England Working Paper Number 186 ; Working Paper, Other
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Wage Flexibility in Britain: Some Micro and Macro Evidence

 

 January, 2003 Institutions and Wage Formation in the New Europe ; Article in Book
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Identifying Inflation's Grease and Sand Effects in the Labor Market

 

 January, 1999 The Costs and Benefits of Achieving Price Stability (NBER) ; Erica L Groshen; Article in Book
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Inflation Goals and the Labor Market

 

 December, 1997 Current Issues in Economics and Finance, volume 3, number 15 ; Erica L Groshen; Article in Book
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Macro- and Microeconomic Consequences of Wage Rigidity

 

 January, 1997 The Human Resources Management Handbook, JAI Press ; Article in Book
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