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Predicting Recessions Using the Yield Curve: The Role of the Stance of Monetary Policy
Fuhrer, Jeffrey C.; Cooper, Daniel H.; Olivei, Giovanni P. (2020-02-03)
The yield curve is often viewed as a leading indicator of recessions. While the yield curve’s predictive power is not without controversy, its ability to anticipate economic downturns endures across specifications and time periods. This note examines the predictive power of the yield curve after accounting for the current stance of monetary policy—a relevant issue given that monetary policy was unusually accommodative during the most recent yield curve inversion, in the third quarter of 2019. The results show that a yield curve inversion likely overstates the probability of a recession ...
Current Policy Perspectives

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Global standards for liquidity regulation
Peek, Joe; Liebmann, Eva (2015-07-01)
Liquidity risk has received increased attention recently, especially in light of the 2007 - 2009 financial crisis, when banks' extensive reliance on short-term funding, maturity mismatches between assets and liabilities, and insufficient liquidity buffers made them quite susceptible to liquidity risk. To mitigate such risk, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) introduced an improved global capital framework and new global liquidity standards for banks in December 2010 in the form of the new Basel Accord (Basel III). This brief offers insights from the crisis experience, ...
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 15-3

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Allocation and Employment Effect of the Paycheck Protection Program
Joaquim, Gustavo (2021-12-21)
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a large and unprecedented small-business support program enacted as a response to the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. The PPP administered almost $800 billion in loans and grants to small businesses through the banking system. However, there is still limited consensus on its overall effect on employment. This paper explores why it is challenging to estimate the effect of the PPP. To do so, we first focus on the timing of the allocation of PPP funds across regions and firms. Counties less affected by COVID-19 and with a larger presence of ...
Current Policy Perspectives

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Cost-Price Relationships in a Concentrated Economy
Bräuning, Falk; Fillat, José; Joaquim, Gustavo (2022-05-23)
The US economy is at least 50 percent more concentrated today than it was in 2005. In this paper, we estimate the effect of this increase on the pass-through of cost shocks into prices. Our estimates imply that the pass-through becomes about 25 percentage points greater when there is an increase in concentration similar to the one observed since the beginning of this century. The resulting above-trend price growth lasts for about four quarters. Our findings suggest that the increase in industry concentration over the past two decades could be amplifying the inflationary pressure from current ...
Current Policy Perspectives

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Faster payments: market structure and policy considerations
Stavins, Joanna; Baughman, Garth; Stewart, Kylie; Rosenbaum, Aaron; Hayashi, Fumiko; Manuszak, Mark D. (2017-09-21)
The U.S. payments industry is in the process of developing ubiquitous, safe, faster electronic solutions for making a broad variety of business and personal payments. How this market for faster payments will evolve will be shaped by a range of economic forces, such as economies of scale and scope, network effects, switching costs, and product differentiation. Emerging technologies could alter these forces and lead to new organizational arrangements or market structures that are different from those in legacy payment markets to date. In light of this uncertainty, this paper examines three ...
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 17-4

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Bitcoin as money?
Lo, Stephanie; Wang, J. Christina (2014-09-04)
The spectacular rise late last year in the price of Bitcoin, the dominant virtual currency, has attracted much public attention as well as scholarly interest. This policy brief discusses how some features of Bitcoin, as designed and executed to date, have hampered its ability to perform the functions required of a fiat money??as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Furthermore, we document how various forms of intermediaries have emerged and evolved within the Bitcoin network, particularly noting the convergence toward concentrated processing, both on and off the ...
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 14-4

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Forecasting CPI Shelter under Falling Market-Rent Growth
Cotton, Christopher D.; O'Shea, John (2023-02-16)
Shelter (housing) costs constitute a large component of price indexes, including 42 percent of the widely followed core Consumer Price Index (CPI). The shelter prices measured in the CPI capture new and existing renters and tend to lag market rents. This lag explains how in recent months the shelter-price index (CPI shelter) has accelerated while market rents have pulled back. We construct an error correction model using data at the metropolitan statistical area level to forecast how CPI shelter will evolve. We forecast that CPI shelter will grow 5.88 percent from September 2022 to September ...
Current Policy Perspectives

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Transitory or Persistent? What the Frequency of Price Changes May Tell Us about Inflation
Cotton, Christopher D.; Garga, Vaishali (2025-08-27)
This brief shows how distinguishing between the dynamics of frequently and infrequently adjusted prices can provide insight into the nature of inflation—whether inflation pressures are new and transitory or sustained and spreading. It breaks down the non-rent portion of the Consumer Price Index into two subindexes, one for products that change prices frequently (the flexible sector) and one for products that change prices infrequently (the sticky sector).
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 25-11

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Community Education Circles in the Lawrence Public Schools: evaluation design and baseline survey data
Brown, John C.; Graves, Erin; Triest, Robert K.; Burke, Mary A.; Bradbury, Katharine L. (2017-06-01)
This paper describes a plan for evaluating the Community Education Circles (CECs) program that is being implemented in the Lawrence Public Schools as part of an effort to enhance family-school engagement and improve outcomes for both students and parents. The CECs program supports the larger Lawrence Working Families Initiative, which in 2013 was awarded a multiyear grant through the Boston Fed?s Working Cities Challenge. This paper accomplishes several objectives: (1) describe the goals and methods of the CECs program as well as the larger goals of the Lawrence Working Families Initiative; ...
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 17-1

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How the Student Loan Payment Pause Affected Borrowers’ Credit Access and Credit Use
Cooper, Daniel H.; Haddix, Maddie (2025-01-13)
This brief examines how the pandemic-related, 43-month moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accruals affected borrowers’ credit card limits and balances. The pause freed up an average of $280 a month for each of the 17 million student loan holders in active repayment, and it included a provision that erased previous defaults on student loans.
Current Policy Perspectives , Paper 25-1

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