Search Results
Journal Article
Who doesn't have health insurance and why
Journal Article
Underemployment poses long-term financial risk to more workers
The underemployed and the discouraged?those who have given up trying to find work? are additional indicators of labor dislocation.
Working Paper
Labor Market Effects of Credit Constraints: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
We exploit the 1998 and 2003 constitutional amendment in Texas—allowing home equity loans and lines of credit for non-housing purposes—as natural experiments to estimate the effect of easier credit access on the labor market. Using state-level as well as micro data and the synthetic control approach, we find that easier access to housing credit led to a notably lower labor force participation rate between 1998 and 2007. We show that our findings are remarkably robust to improved synthetic control methods based on insights from machine learning. We explore treatment effect heterogeneity ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Unemployment Benefits Provided Much-Needed Fiscal Support
Recent analysis suggests that enhanced unemployment insurance benefits implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have helped buttress spending among the unemployed and supported state and local economies. Their economic impact in Texas relative to the nation has been constrained by lower levels of participation in the unemployment aid programs and more modest per-capita payments from them.
Journal Article
Texas Top-Rated State for Firm Relocations
Texas is the leading destination for companies relocating from other states. The economic benefits of the moves may be best measured in terms of the ancillary activity generated rather than the benefits directly attributable to the relocations.
Journal Article
College pays dividends - more so in Texas than U.S.
Economic research confirms what parents have been telling their children for generations: College education pays off in higher earnings. Indeed, the gains from earning a college degree have been rising over the past quarter century--in both the nation and Texas. ; Supply and demand go a long way toward explaining rapid increases in the college premium since the 1980s. Texas' faster increases suggest demand growth has outpaced supply growth by a wider margin in the state than the nation.
Labor Economy at Greater Risk in Texas than U.S. During COVID-19 Crisis
The coronavirus crisis could more adversely affect the Texas economy than the U.S. economy due to the state’s relatively large share of at-risk jobs, a review of data suggests.
Journal Article
On the record: Baby boomers face a changing retirement landscape: a conversation with Anil Kumar
Many baby boom era workers, those born between 1946 and 1962, count on various retirement benefits accumulated during their working years to ensure adequate resources as they grow older. A man turning 65 today can expect to live to age 83; a woman to age 85, according to Social Security Administration data. One in 10 will live past age 95. Dallas Fed economist Anil Kumar discusses the retirement outlook for baby boomers and growth of 401(k)-type retirement accounts.
Working Paper
Did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Create Jobs and Stimulate Growth?
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 is the most extensive overhaul of the U.S. income tax code since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Existing estimates of TCJA’s economic impact are based on economic projections using pre-TCJA estimates of tax effects. I exploit plausibly exogenous state-level variation in tax changes from TCJA and find that an income tax cut equaling 1 percent of GDP led to a 1.2-percentage-point faster job growth and nearly 1.5 percentage points higher GDP growth over two years following the law change. While the estimates are imprecise, the overall pattern suggests that ...
Journal Article
Why Texas feels less subprime stress than U.S.
Differences in economic factors and mortgage characteristics give the state a lower delinquency rate.