Outlook for the Budget and the Economy
- Working Paper
Budgetary Implications of Economic Scenarios With Higher and Lower Interest Rates: Working Paper 2022-04
This paper reports CBO’s projections of economic and budgetary outcomes under two scenarios with divergent paths for interest rates.
- Working Paper
How Changes in the Distribution of Earnings Affect the Federal Deficit: Working Paper 2021-12
This paper examines how the federal budget deficit would have differed in 2018 under four scenarios that vary the distribution of labor earnings while leaving aggregate earnings unchanged.
- Working Paper
Key Methods That CBO Used to Estimate the Effects of Pandemic-Related Legislation on Output: Working Paper 2020-07
This paper describes key methods that the Congressional Budget Office used to estimate the effects on economic output of the laws enacted in response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
- Working Paper
CBO's Oil Price Forecasting Record: Working Paper 2020-03
Oil prices are one of the economic variables that underlie CBO's projections of the federal budget. This paper describes CBO's methods to forecast oil prices and evaluates the quality of the agency's historical forecasts.
- Working Paper
The Effect of Government Debt on Interest Rates: Working Paper 2019-01
On average over the long term, each increase of 1 percentage point in federal debt as a percentage of GDP boosts interest rates by 2 to 3 basis points, CBO estimates.
- Working Paper
CBO’s Model for Forecasting Business Investment: Working Paper 2018-09
This paper presents CBO’s model of business investment, compares it with other models of investment, shows how the model is estimated, and discusses how CBO uses the model to forecast investment.
- Working Paper
CBO’s Projection of Labor Force Participation Rates: Working Paper 2018-04
Describing the methods used to produce CBO’s projections of labor force participation rates, this paper examines the recent trends in the overall and prime-age labor force participation rates and whether those trends persist over 10 years.
- Working Paper
Estimating and Projecting Potential Output Using CBO’s Forecasting Growth Model: Working Paper 2018-03
This paper documents CBO’s model of potential output. It describes the data, analytic methods, and modeling framework used to estimate historical values of the components of potential output and to project those values into the future.
- Working Paper
How CBO Produces Its 10-Year Economic Forecast: Working Paper 2018-02
This paper describes how CBO produces its semiannual economic forecast, including background analysis, preliminary forecasts, and internal and external review. It also describes the large-scale macro model used to produce the forecast.
- Working Paper
How CBO Estimates Automatic Stabilizers: Working Paper 2015-07
Federal receipts and certain federal outlays regularly respond to cyclical movements in the economy. CBO released a working paper on how it estimates the size of those automatic stabilizers, for both past years and future years.