Search Results
Briefing
Is Urban Cool Cooling New Jersey’s Job Market?
Since 2000, employment in New Jersey has slowed considerably compared with its relatively steady growth in the late 1980s through the 1990s. As of the second quarter of 2015, New Jersey?s total payroll employment was less than 1 percent greater than it was in the first quarter of 2000.
Discussion Paper
Are Fifth District Firms Revisiting Their Prices Less Often Amid Cooling Inflation?
The Richmond Fed's monthly business surveys of Fifth District firms gauge regional firm dynamics in pricing. We carefully monitor changes in firms' realized prices as well as their pricing expectations, especially since inflation began to accelerate in 2021 and 2022. Early last year, we examined how firms began to adjust their prices more frequently as firms' price forecasts became less accurate and uncertainty rose, as evidenced by a rising standard deviation of price growth expectations.
Journal Article
Regional Spotlight: Purchasing Power Across the U.S.
Where you live can determine how far a dollar goes. But pay varies regionally, too. To get a true picture of an area?s affordability, it helps to understand regional price parities.
Working Paper
The Labor Market Effects of Place-Based Policies: Evidence from England’s Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
Neighborhood renewal programs are a type of place-based policy that aim to revive underperforming localities. The literature on place-based policies has found mixed results regarding their effects on local labor market outcomes, but there are relatively few studies of policies that aim to improve local labor supply. In this paper, we examine the labor market effects of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, which targeted eighty-eight of the most deprived areas in England during the early 2000s as part of the Labour Government's National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. The fund disbursed almost ...
Journal Article
Are we in a recession? The 'anxious index nowcast' knows!
When the economy is in the midst of a recession, even a severe one, it can be quite difficult at first to tell. For example, as the Great Recession took hold in late 2007 and early 2008, uncertainty lingered as to whether the economy had merely slowed or was already contracting. Unfortunately for policymakers, investors, and consumers ? all of whom might have been able to use such information to make better decisions regarding consumption, investment, and saving ? the recession was not officially called until December 2008. Similarly, the four prior recessions were anywhere from five to nine ...
Journal Article
Regional Spotlight: Evaluating Metro Unemployment Rates Throughout the Business Cycle
Over 80 percent of the world?s recreational vehicle (RV) production occurs in or near Elkhart, IN, so it?s no wonder that, for decades, Elkhart has been known as the RV capital of the world. Thanks in part to RVs, Elkhart?s unemployment rate was comfortably below the national rate in 2007?but then RV sales plummeted two years in a row, a signal that American consumers could no longer afford high-ticket luxury goods.2 By the depths of the Great Recession in mid-2009, nearly one-fifth of Elkhart?s labor force was unemployed. However, Elkhart?s labor market quickly recovered, with unemployment ...
Briefing
SOS! Signaling Recessions Earlier
For consumers of economic data navigating an overgrown jungle of economic facts, figures and statistics, leveraging simple statistical regularities can be useful in tracking important changes in the momentum of the economy. For example, many economic analysts interpret two consecutive quarterly declines in gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of recession, even though the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) uses several other indicators to determine official recession start and end dates. Another very popular recession indicator is the Sahm rule, which signals the start of a ...
Working Paper
The Economic Impact of a Casino Monopoly: Evidence from Atlantic City
New Jersey voters approved legalized gambling for Atlantic City in a 1976 referendum, making it the second state after Nevada in 1931. The state explicitly leveraged the city's regional monopoly, which it held from 1978 through 1992, on casinos east of the Mississippi River as an economic development strategy to revive the blighted seaside resort town. The literature on the economic development effects of casinos suggests that sparsely populated areas without nearby competing gambling venues tend to benefit the most. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I model the economic impact of ...
Journal Article
Third District State Budgets in the Coronavirus Recession
Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are in for a struggle as they try to balance their budgets during this unprecedented economic cycle.