Matthew Shapiro
Lawrence R. Klein Collegiate Professor of Economics, University of Michigan
Lawrence R. Klein Collegiate Professor of Economics, University of Michigan
Matthew D. Shapiro is the Lawrence R. Klein Collegiate Professor of Economics and Research Professor (Survey Research Center) at the University of Michigan. He is editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Shapiro received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Yale in 1979 and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1984.
Shapiro’s general area of expertise is macroeconomics. He has carried out research on investment and capital utilization, business-cycle fluctuations, consumption and saving, financial markets, fiscal policy, monetary policy, time-series econometrics, economics of aging, economic measurement, and survey methodology. Among his current research interests are modeling saving, retirement, health, insurance, and portfolio choices of older Americans; using surveys to address questions in macroeconomics and individual decisionmaking; modeling how changes in tax policy affect consumption, investment, employment, and output; improving the quality of national economic statistics; and using naturally-occurring data such as account records and social media to measure and understand economic activity.
During 1993-1994, Shapiro served as Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers with responsibilities for macroeconomic analysis and the weekly economic briefing of the President. He was also a Junior Staff Economist at the Council during 1979-1980. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1989, Shapiro was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale and a member of the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Shapiro was co-editor of the American Economic Review from 1997 to 2000. He was Chair of the Department of Economics, University of Michigan, from 2003 to 2007.
Shapiro is the chair of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC)–the official advisory committee of the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Shapiro has served as chair of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics (AEAStat) and as a member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) and its Panel on Non-Market Accounts.
Matthew D. Shapiro is married to Susan L. Garetz, M.D., Associate Professor of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of Michigan Health System. They have two children.
Using comprehensive account records, this paper examines how individuals adjusted spending and saving in response to a temporary drop in income due to the 2013 U.S. government shutdown. The shutdown cut paychecks by 40% for affected employees, which was recovered within 2 weeks. Though the shock was short-lived and completely reversed, spending dropped sharply implying a naïve estimate of the marginal propensity to spend of 0.58. This estimate overstates how consumption responded. While many individuals had low liquidity, they used multiple strategies to smooth consumption including delay of recurring payments such as mortgages and credit card balances.