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The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available tools a central bank can enable deep negative rates whenever needed—thus maintaining the power of monetary policy in the future to end recessions within a short time. This paper demonstrates that a subset of these tools can have a big effect in enabling deep negative rates with administratively small actions on the part of the central bank. To that end, we (i) survey approaches to enable deep negative rates discussed in the literature and present new approaches; (ii) establish how a subset of these approaches allows enabling negative rates while remaining at a minimum distance from the current paper currency policy and minimizing the political costs; (iii) discuss why standard transmission mechanisms from interest rates to aggregate demand are likely to remain unchanged in deep negative rate territory; and (iv) present communication tools that central banks can use both now and in the event to facilitate broader political acceptance of negative interest rate policy at the onset of the next serious recession.

Economic policy. --- Economic nationalism --- Economic planning --- National planning --- State planning --- Economics --- Planning --- National security --- Social policy --- Banks and Banking --- Money and Monetary Policy --- Industries: Financial Services --- Monetary Systems --- Standards --- Regimes --- Government and the Monetary System --- Payment Systems --- Banks --- Depository Institutions --- Micro Finance Institutions --- Mortgages --- Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects --- Monetary economics --- Banking --- Distributed ledgers --- Finance --- Currencies --- Negative interest rates --- Digital currencies --- Central bank policy rate --- Money --- Monetary policy --- Technology --- Financial services --- Zero lower bound --- Banks and banking --- Interest rates --- Financial services industry --- Technological innovations --- United States

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Firms in the S&P 500 often announce layoffs within days of one another, despite the fact that the average S&P 500 constituent announces layoffs once every 5 years. By contrast, similarsized privately-held firms do not behave in this way. This paper provides empirical evidence that such clustering behavior is largely due to CEOs managing their reputation in financial markets. To interpret these results we develop a theoretical framework in which managers delay layoffs during good economic states to avoid damaging the markets perception of their ability. The model predicts clustering in the timing of layoff announcements, and illustrates a mechanism through which the cyclicality of firms layoff policies is amplified. Our findings suggest that reputation management is an important driver of layoff policies both at daily frequencies and over the business cycle, and can have significant macroeconomic consequences.

Layoff systems. --- Chief executive officers. --- CEOs (Executives) --- Executive officers, Chief --- Executives --- Employees --- Job security --- Dismissal of --- Layoff systems --- Corporations --- Chief executive officers --- Business corporations --- C corporations --- Corporations, Business --- Corporations, Public --- Limited companies --- Publicly held corporations --- Publicly traded corporations --- Public limited companies --- Stock corporations --- Subchapter C corporations --- Business enterprises --- Corporate power --- Disincorporation --- Stocks --- Trusts, Industrial --- E-books --- Finance: General --- Labor --- Macroeconomics --- Labor Turnover --- Vacancies --- Layoffs --- Financing Policy --- Financial Risk and Risk Management --- Capital and Ownership Structure --- Value of Firms --- Goodwill --- Information and Market Efficiency --- Event Studies --- Business Fluctuations --- Cycles --- Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: General (includes Measurement and Data) --- Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure --- General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) --- Labor Economics: General --- Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General --- Economic growth --- Labour --- income economics --- Finance --- Business cycles --- Labor force --- Stock markets --- Wages --- Financial markets --- Labor market --- Stock exchanges --- Labor economics --- United States --- Income economics