Search Results
Speech
Reinventing older communities: bridging growth & opportunity
President Charles Plosser discusses emerging trends in the labor market, demographics, and educational system and discusses how understanding them can help prepare communities for growth and prosperity. He also cites how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs will drive future labor demand and productivity.
Briefing
Responding to Urban Decline
In recent decades, a number of once-prominent U.S. cities have experienced economic hardship and significant population loss. Policymakers in those cities want to jump-start growth and improve prospects for the people who live there. But where should they begin? This Economic Brief surveys economic studies on a variety of urban policy interventions and provides lessons for policymakers.
Journal Article
Information and Communications Technology Spending and City Size
Firms in big cities are spending more on information and communications technology than firms in small cities, a likely cause of the growing economic divide between big and small U.S. cities.
Report
How mortgage finance affects the urban landscape
This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the U.S., and its role in shaping patterns of homeownership, the nature of the housing stock, and the organization of residential activity. We start by providing some background on the design features of mortgage contracts that distinguish them from other loans, and that have important implications for issues presented in the rest of the chapter. We then explain how mortgage finance interacts with public policy, particularly tax policy, to influence a household?s decision to own or rent, and how shifts in the demand for ...
Speech
Welcoming Address
Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker delivered welcoming remarks at the Bank?s biennial Policy Forum. This year?s forum focused on research that explores how cities can revitalize their economies in an inclusive way.
Journal Article
The Richmond Fed and Urban Economics
Discussion Paper
Does the Rise in Housing Prices Suggest a Housing Bubble?
House prices have risen rapidly during the pandemic, increasing even faster than the pace set before the 2007 financial crisis and subsequent recession. Is there a risk that another dangerous housing bubble is developing? This is a complicated question, and the answer has many components. This post, the first of two, provides a more detailed look at the recent rise in home prices by breaking it down geographically, with a comparison to the pre-2007 bubble. The second post looks at the potential risks to financial stability by comparing the currently outstanding stock of mortgage debt to the ...
Briefing
Inequality in and across Cities
Inequality in the United States has an important spatial component. More-skilled workers tend to live in larger cities where they earn higher wages. Less-skilled workers make lower wages and do not experience similar gains even when they live in those cities. This dynamic implies that larger cities are also more unequal. These relationships appear to have become more pronounced as inequality has increased. The evidence points to externalities among high-skilled workers as a significant contributor to those patterns.
Journal Article
Business Dynamism and City Size
Business dynamism has been decreasing since the 1980s, but less so for larger cities.