“The pandemic has shifted the distribution of inflation to the right. That is, during the COVID-19 period, a larger share of consumption expenditures were on products that experienced higher inflation rates than in the pre-pandemic years. The current high inflation episode is a widespread phenomenon and not the result of a few outliers.” “The distribution…

“U.S. households accumulated excess savings at an unprecedented speed following the onset of the pandemic recession, relative to other post-1970 recessions. Despite recent rapid drawdowns of those savings, a large amount—around $500 billion—remains in the overall economy.” “A great deal of uncertainty surrounds precisely how the savings are distributed across household income levels and in…

“We find that price changes in the housing sector are the main driver of regional differences in inflation in the two time periods we investigate: January 2002–January 2023 and January 2019–January 2023. Although residents in different areas do have different purchasing patterns, we find that this plays only a small role in discrepancies in regional…

“The New York Fed’s Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG) recently released a consultative white paper on clearing and settlement processes for secured financing trades (SFT) involving U.S. Treasury securities. The paper describes the many ways that Treasury SFTs are cleared and settled— information that may not be readily available to all market participants. It also identifies potential risk and…

“International trade can be critical for economic growth and development, connecting countries and businesses across the world.1 While trade barriers have consistently decreased in recent decades, leading to the unprecedented growth of trade linkages, significant barriers remain across countries: The US is no exception. Barriers hinder the free flow of goods and services between countries…

“This paper examines how the election of 1912 changed the makeup of Congress and led to the Federal Reserve Act. The decision of Theodore Roosevelt and other Progressives to run as third party candidates split the Republican Party and enabled Democrats to capture the White House and Congress. We show that the election produced a…

“The U.S. labor force participation rate (LFPR) experienced a record drop during the early pandemic. While it has since recovered to 62.2% as of December 2022, it was still 1.41 pp below its pre-pandemic peak. This gap is explained mostly by a permanent decline in the LFPR for workers older than 55. This paper argues…

“Together, The CFO Survey and the Richmond Fed surveys of manufacturers and service providers indicate that firms have recently been less likely to take on new capital expenditures and are thus either slowing the pace of existing projects or pushing back the start of pending projects. There is some evidence that recent changes to capital…

“We study the relationship between volatility and liquidity in the market for on-the-run Treasury securities using a novel framework for quantifying price impact. We show that at times of relatively low volatility, marginal trades that go with the ow of existing trades tend to have a smaller price impact than trades that go against the…

“Labor market frictions are basically irrelevant for primary sector workers who make up around 55 percent of the population. These workers are almost always employed and they very rarely experience unemployment. They also seamlessly move from non-participation to employment unlike workers in the secondary and tertiary sectors. The secondary sector, which constitutes 14 percent of…

“Because the Chinese rebound has so far been driven primarily by domestic demand, which tends to be less sensitive to imports, we expect only minor effects on U.S. exporters. As the recovery broadens over time, however, Chinese economic growth could spur global growth, with positive effects on the United States.”

“A decline in the number of people participating in the labor force can have a negative impact on the overall economy.” “According to research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 2017, a falling LFP rate can slow the growth of GDP, since “fewer people are contributing to the nation’s output of goods and services.” Additionally,…