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Speech
The Federal Reserve System and Community Development: The Why, The How, and The What 2017 Policy Summit on Housing, Human Capital, and Inequality, Cleveland, OH
Over the past 14 years, the Policy Summit has brought together community development practitioners, researchers, funders, policymakers, and others interested in strengthening our communities so that all people have the opportunity to productively engage in our economy and to share in its benefits. As is clear from the many conversations we?ve had over the past two days ? and over the past 14 years of this summit ? there are no easy answers. But there are some answers. I will touch on ?the why, the how, and the what? of this work: why we at the Fed see our community development efforts as ...
Briefing
Discussing Data: The Elevator Pitch
Researchers and custodians of data are often tasked with explaining their data to unfamiliar audiences. There exists a knowledge gap that can be challenging, particularly when attempting to communicate research that uses complex or less well-known data. This paper describes an “elevator pitch” that can be used to quickly and efficiently present core characteristics of data. Specifically, it outlines seven core characteristics that can be used to create such a pitch. Additionally, it provides examples of how this compact description can be integrated into research papers, presentations, or ...
What Types of Customer Data Do Fintech Firms Use?
Beyond cash flow and credit scores, technology-driven lenders have also looked at social media activity and phone ownership.
Newsletter
Ethical Use of Data with FRED
What are the ethical considerations for researchers who use data? This data primer describes standards for gathering, analyzing, storing, and distributing data for new data users and serves as a reference for advanced data users.
Will Digital Wallets Replace Cash?
Dialogue with the Fed attendees hear about the opportunities and challenges involved with digital wallets like Venmo.
Discussion Paper
Monetizing Privacy with Central Bank Digital Currencies
In prior research, we documented evidence suggesting that digital payment adoptions have accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While digitalization of payment activity improves data utilization by firms, it can also infringe upon consumers’ right to privacy. Drawing from a recent paper, this blog post explains how payment data acquired by firms impacts market structure and consumer welfare. Then, we discuss the implications of introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that offers consumers a low-cost, privacy-preserving electronic means of payment—essentially, digital ...
Speech
Center for the REstoration of Economic Data: The Past Is Indeed Prologue
Philadelphia Fed President and CEO Patrick T. Harker, speaking at the inaugural conference of the Philadelphia Fed’s new Center for the REstoration of Economic Data (CREED), announced the Center’s commitment to bringing historical data to light by “taking unstructured, analog data and converting it into useful, accessible, and high-quality data” for public use.In discussing the Philadelphia Fed’s recent research on housing, Harker stressed the importance of “bringing old data to light” to find a “historical economic perspective,” and “to better inform our present ...
Speech
All About Data
Remarks at Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York.
Working Paper
Introducing a Framework for Measuring the Quantitative Benefits of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
This paper reviews privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and explores their benefits when used to make traditional payment processes more private. PETs can decrease privacy risk by reducing the amount of sensitive information accessible to payment-processing personnel and systems. This paper proposes a framework for quantifying the risk-reduction benefits of PETs. This method can be used to calculate the amount of privacy-risk exposure that may be created by a set of payment activities, estimate the amount by which PETs can decrease that exposure, and compare that quantified benefit against ...
Working Paper
Data, Privacy Laws and Firm Production: Evidence from the GDPR
By regulating how firms collect, store, and use data, privacy laws may change the role of data in production and alter firm demand for information technology inputs. We study how firms respond to privacy laws in the context of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using seven years of data from a large global cloud-computing provider. Our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that, in response to the GDPR, EU firms decreased data storage by 26% and data processing by 15% relative to comparable U.S. firms, becoming less “data-intensive.” To estimate the costs of the ...