Search Results
Journal Article
COVID-19 and CO2
One potential side effect from the rapid decline of global economic activity since the worldwide pandemic is a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Historically, CO2 emissions rise and fall in tandem with economic activity in the short run. Since the industries most affected by the downturn also produce the most CO2, emissions could drop more than output this time around. However, without substantial and sustained changes in energy sources and efficiency, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere—the relevant factor causing climate change—will continue on its upward trajectory.
Journal Article
Adjusting the Unemployment Thermometer
Stay-at-home orders issued to slow the spread of COVID-19 may have severely distorted labor market statistics, notably the official unemployment rate. A method to correct the survey biases associated with the pandemic indicates that the true unemployment rate was substantially higher than the official rate in April and May. However, the biases appeared to fade thereafter, making the drop in June even more dramatic than implied by the official data.
Journal Article
Risk of Business Insolvency during Coronavirus Crisis
Many businesses had amassed high levels of debt, or leverage, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of precaution or necessity, firms increased their borrowing further after the onset. Although the shock to those firms’ value significantly increased their risk, measured by their distance-to-default, the default risk remains relatively small for most corporate debt. Nevertheless, the amount of outstanding liabilities among firms with elevated risk of insolvency is more than two times higher than at the peak of the global financial crisis.
Working Paper
The Covid-19 Pandemic Spurred Growth in Automation: What Does this Mean for Minority Workers?
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated trends in automation as many employers seek to save on labor costs amid widespread illness, increased worker leverage, and market pressures to onshore supply chains. While existing research has explored how automation may displace non-specialized jobs, there is typically less attention paid to how this displacement may interact with preexisting structural issues around racial inequality. This analysis updates that of a 2021 Brookings paper by the authors, finding that Black and Hispanic workers continue to be overrepresented in the 30 occupations with the ...
Briefing
What Makes Supply Chains More Resilient to Economic Shocks?
The recent supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns highlighted the importance of understanding supply chain resilience, which is the extent to which supply chains can resist, adapt to and recover from a sudden economic shock. We analyze the various COVID-19 lockdowns across India to understand which supply chains were more resilient to the lockdown disruptions. Firms that bought more complex products and that transacted with fewer and more important suppliers proved to be more resilient by maintaining buyer-supplier relationships through the lockdowns and exhibiting smaller ...
Journal Article
Impacts of COVID-19 on Nonprofits in the Western United States
Nonprofit organizations play an important role in the response to COVID-19, but the crisis is straining their ability to serve communities. This report summarizes data from a Federal Reserve survey to assess the impact of the pandemic on nonprofit respondents and the communities they serve in the Western United States.
Working Paper
The Economic Gains from Equity
How much is inequity costing us? Using a simple growth accounting framework we apply standard shift-share techniques to data from the Current Population Survey (1990-2019) to compute the aggregate economic costs of persistent educational and labor market disparities by gender and race. We find significant economic losses associated with these gaps. Building on this finding, we consider which disparities generate the largest costs, paying specific attention to differences in employment, hours worked, educational attainment, educational utilization, and occupational allocation. We also examine ...
Speech
3D Public Servants: The Courage to Be Human
Online, prerecorded video presentation at South by Southwest (SXSW), by Mary C. Daly, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, April 16, 2020.
Working Paper
The Impact of COVID on Potential Output
The level of potential output is likely to be subdued post-COVID relative to its previous estimates. Most clearly, capital input and full-employment labor will both be lower than they previously were. Quantitatively, however, these effects appear relatively modest. In the long run, labor scarring could lead to lower levels of employment, but the slow pre-recession pace of GDP growth is unlikely to be substantially affected.
Working Paper
The Chicago Fed DSGE Model: Version 2
The Chicago Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used for policy analysis and forecasting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. This guide describes its specification, estimation, dynamic characteristics, and how it is used to forecast the U.S. economy. In many respects the model resembles other medium-scale New Keynesian frameworks, but there are several features which distinguish it: the monetary policy rule includes anticipated future deviations, productivity is driven by both neutral and investment specific technical change, multiple price and wage indices identify ...