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Journal Article
Okun’s law: a meaningful guide for monetary policy?
Okun?s law can be a useful guide for monetary policy, but only if the natural rate of unemployment is properly measured.>
Journal Article
Labor mismatch in the Great Recession: a review of indexes using recent U.S. data
Labor mismatch, also known as structural imbalance, can be defined as a poor match between the characteristics of unemployed workers and those required for vacant jobs. In the wake of the jobless recovery from the Great Recession, economists have sought to explain the coexistence of a high unemployment rate and increasing job openings as a mismatch phenomenon. This article reviews five studies that have contributed to the development of mismatch indexes and computes the corresponding indexes over the period May 2005?May 2012 using job vacancy data from the Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine ...
Newsletter
“Dewey defeats Truman”: be aware of data revisions
The famous"Dewey Defeats Truman" headline illustrates the importance of timely and accurate data. Agencies that compute economic indicators for the $14 trillion U.S. economy face a tough challenge: providing up-to-the minute results and ensuring the reliability of the data. This month's Page One newsletter, "Dewey Defeats Truman": Be Aware of Data Revisions, explains why there is often a trade-off between these two factors and discusses the importance of data revision.
Working Paper
The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery
We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firm-level information on the first large-scale H-1B visa lottery in 2007. Using an event-study approach, we find that lottery wins lead to increases in firm hiring of college-educated, immigrant labor along with increases in scale and survival. These effects are stronger for small, skill-intensive, and high-productivity firms that ...
Journal Article
Oil price shocks and inflation risk
Oil price shocks appear to have only transitory effects on headline inflation and virtually no impact on measures of underlying trend inflation.
Journal Article
Local housing crisis is similar to nation's
District Overview
Journal Article
The mismatch between job openings and job seekers
Today's high unemployment rate is often linked to a structural imbalance?a mismatch between the skills and location required to fill vacant jobs and the skills and geographical preferences of the unemployed. But the evidence downplays the role of this mismatch.
Journal Article
RMB appreciation and U.S. inflation risk
If oil prices continue to rise and the RMB continues to appreciate, the U.S. inflation rate may increase at a faster pace in the near future. And this would have an unwelcome impact on consumers? wallets.