Date

5-20-2026

Department

Helms School of Government

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy (PhD)

Chair

Stephen P. Manley

Keywords

Coronavirus, Covid, Fed, monetary policy, fiscal policy, quantitative easing

Disciplines

Economics

Abstract

The year 2020 introduced modern American society to viral pandemic conditions not seen in over a century. By ravaging human health and spreading fear, the Coronavirus (Covid) period of 2020 to 2022 significantly impaired interpersonal economic transactions as it transformed beliefs about economics, politics, and social wellbeing. This research focuses on the Fed’s economic policy decisions during the early months of the Coronavirus pandemic when effects of the 2008 financial crisis still lingered as long-term government programs. It was an extraordinary time when policymakers were forced to meander prior policy effects of astonishing reach while considering new policies intended to cope with the unknown force of global pandemic. Novel to this period is the Fed’s unwillingness or inability to use traditional monetary policy while it boldly took the reins of experimental tools that redefined fiscal policy by more than revenue and expenditure variables. Retracing the government’s own economic data and estimates from 1985 in Stage One, two linear equations are derived. The range of output under monetary logic is applied and forecast through 2022 covering the Fed’s 2008 financial crisis policy deployments and the Coronavirus period. In Stage Two, each period is described by fiscal and monetary data, including the Taylor and Barro-Redlick models, to settle theories behind fiscal effects. Each quarter of the Coronavirus period undergoes analysis to determine whether fiscal effect from the reactive policies can satisfy the research question: what effects did the Fed’s fiscal policy response have on macroeconomic performance following the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020? The view proposed is that fiscal effects should be parsed to their source to better understand short- and long-term effects of complex multivariate fiscal sources when adopting new policies. This research shows fiscal conflicts make this more difficult than assumed.

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