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Working Paper
Death of Coal and Breath of Life: The Effect of Power Plant Closure on Local Air Quality
The number of U.S. coal-fired power plants declined by nearly 250 between 2001 and 2018. Given that burning coal generates large amounts of particulate matter, which is known to have adverse health effects, the closure of a coal-fired power plant should improve local air quality. Using spatial panel data from air quality monitor stations and coal-fired power plants, we estimate the relationship between plant closure and local air quality. We find that on average, the levels of particulate matter within 25 and 50 mile buffers around air quality monitors declined between 7 and 14 percent with ...
Journal Article
When the Music Stops: Slowing Wage Growth May Lead to More Delinquent Debt
Subprime auto debt has risen nearly 10 percent above pre-pandemic levels, and delinquency rates have increased despite high wage growth in the economy. Historically, high wage growth has been associated with lower transitions into delinquency. Should wage growth slow, delinquency rates would likely rise even higher, especially among subprime borrowers.
Briefing
Federal Reserve District County Shapefiles
Federal Reserve District boundaries have been discussed many times since they were first defined and have been set for some time now. However, an easily accessible and accurate delineation of the boundaries does not currently exist in a central location. This may create challenges for Regional Banks of the Federal Reserve System, which attempt to provide an accurate picture of the economy in their region. Many times, state-level data are all that are available; however, when county-level data are available, FRS staff can produce more precise estimates of what is happening in a Federal Reserve ...
Journal Article
Consumer Debt Is High, but Consumers Seem to Have Room to Run
Real consumer debt is now higher than its prior peak during the global financial crisis, driven in part by increases in credit card debt. Although the share of credit card debt transitioning into delinquency has risen, it remains below levels seen during the global financial crisis. Moreover, debt-to-income measures remain historically low, suggesting that consumers in aggregate may have more room to run up debt before experiencing further financial stress.
Journal Article
Population Turnover and the Growth of Urban Areas
People in the United States are relocating nearly half as much they did in the early 1980s. Lower population turnover—the propensity of people to move into or out of a given location—may mean a decline in labor market adjustment across industries and occupations; when people move across regions for job-related reasons, they may help smooth out changes that hit certain labor markets harder than others. Population turnover may also lead to better matches between employer and employee, an important factor in the growth of urban areas.Jason P. Brown and Colton Tousey examine the relationship ...
Journal Article
How the Pandemic Influenced Trends in Domestic Migration across U.S. Urban Areas
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, net domestic migration in the United States was generally increasing in smaller urban areas while declining in the largest urban areas; as people sought to mitigate exposure to COVID-19 and avoid stricter lockdown measures, the pandemic may have accelerated this trend. Changes in domestic migration trends may influence the longer-term growth prospects of places, but investigating recent trends in domestic migration can be challenging because data from official government sources are released with a long lag.Jason P. Brown and Colton Tousey overcome this lag by ...
Journal Article
Auto Loan Delinquency Rates Are Rising, but Mostly among Subprime Borrowers
Steady increases in U.S. auto debt over the past seven years have raised concerns over credit quality and delinquency in consumers' repayment. We investigate these concerns and find that the credit quality of auto debt has actually improved throughout the current expansion. Delinquency rates have been rising mostly among subprime borrowers, who represent about a quarter of total outstanding auto debt. However, the potential risks to the financial sector are currently unknown and warrant close monitoring.
Working Paper
Rising Market Concentration and the Decline of Food Price Shock Pass-Through to Core Inflation
Using a vector autoregression that allows for time-varying parameters and stochastic volatility, we show that U.S. core inflation became 75 percent less responsive to shocks in food prices since the late 1970s. The decline in the pass-through of food price shocks to inflation is a result of a decline in both volatility and the persistence of food price changes in inflation. This decline in pass-through coincides with a period of increasing concentration in the food supply chain, especially among U.S. grocery retailers and distributors. We find that 60 percent of the variation in pass-through ...
Journal Article
Drilling Productivity in the United States: What Lies Beneath
We construct new measures of drilling productivity and find that productivity increased sixfold from the mid-2000s to early 2017. Gains in below-ground efficiency?the number of barrels produced per foot of drilled wells?have largely driven this increase in overall productivity. The large oil price declines during the Great Recession and from 2014 to 2016 also played a role. However, further large increases in productivity are unlikely absent additional improvements in technology or a subsequent large downturn in oil prices.
Journal Article
The Shifting Expectations for Work from Home
As COVID-19 moves to an endemic state, employers have brought workers back to the office. Many workers prefer to continue working from home a portion of time, resulting in a gap between employee preferences for work from home and employer plans. Knowing who currently works from home a larger share of time and where this gap is narrowest across worker characteristics and locations helps explain where and for whom work from home is most likely to remain a permanent feature in the labor market.Using a relatively new data source, the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, Jason P. Brown ...