Search Results
Journal Article
Getting a Jump on Inflation
Accurate official estimates of Fed policymakers? preferred PCE inflation measure take months, and sometimes years, to become available. A small set of timelier indicators offers realtime power to ?nowcast? PCE inflation. Those indicators provide as much accuracy as initial government estimates and remain informative even after official estimates have been published.
Journal Article
Did speculation drive oil prices? market fundamentals suggest otherwise
Oil market speculation became an especially popular topic when the price of crude tripled over 18 months to a record high $145 per barrel in July 2008. Of particular interest to many is whether speculators drove oil prices beyond what fundamentals would have otherwise justified. We explore this issue over two Economic Letters. In this article, we look at evidence from the physical market for oil and conclude that fundamentals, and not speculation, were behind the dramatic rise and fall in oil prices. In our companion Economic Letter, we examine the futures market.
Journal Article
Obstacles to measuring global output gaps
Monetary policymakers pay close attention to levels of resource use. In the past, the focus was largely on domestic slack. Now, some analysts contend the ongoing process of globalization requires policymakers to look at global slack as well.
Journal Article
Impact of Chinese slowdown on U.S. no longer negligible
The impact of the Chinese economy on the U.S. has notably increased over the past two decades. Econometric modeling shows that the U.S. economy is more likely to directly and indirectly (through its trading partners) feel the impact of a negative shock to Chinese output.
Journal Article
Economic shocks reverberate in world of interconnected trade ties
As the world economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession and global trade flows remain weak, net trade contributions to domestic growth become more critical.
Journal Article
Inflation expectations have become more anchored over time
The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on the United States in October 1973 in response to U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The embargo was lifted in March 1974, and although it lasted less than six months, the effects on inflation and inflation expectations in the United States would persist for a decade.
Journal Article
Weakly capitalized banks slowed lending recovery after recession
The reluctance to lend played out particularly among a subset of banks?often larger institutions with very low ratios of capital to assets.
Journal Article
Steeling the U.S. Economy for the Impacts of Tariffs
Proposed steel and aluminum tariffs would likely trim a quarter percent from the U.S. gross domestic product over the long run. U.S. metals industries would likely expand, while heavy industries, such as machines and equipment, would probably contract along with aggregate capital formation. The main risks lie in the potential for retaliation by trading partners and the possibility of a trade war.
Journal Article
Current account surplus may damp the effects of China’s credit boom
In contrast to similar credit expansions in the euro periphery in the 2000s and East Asia in the 1990s, China?s credit boom is far less likely to end in a dramatic bust because it?s financed by domestic savings.
Journal Article
Real-time historical dataset enhances accuracy of economic analyses
A growing body of empirical macroeconomic literature suggests that analyses using real-time data often yield substantially different?and more accurate?conclusions.