Search Results
Journal Article
Productivity During and Since the Pandemic
U.S. labor productivity initially surged in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the massive economic upheaval. As the economy recovered, the level of productivity retreated to its slow pre-pandemic trend. As of mid-2024, it remained close to but just above that trend. The surge and retreat in productivity follows the pre-pandemic cyclical relationship in which U.S. productivity rises temporarily in recessions. This example highlights the need to look through temporary cyclical effects when trying to infer longer-run trends.
Journal Article
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions: The Impact and Challenges of Its Workforce Partnership Model
The recent economic recession and equally anemic recovery have dramatically changed the job outlook for low-wage workers and disadvantaged youth in America. In addition, the Great Recession has accelerated the long-term trend toward requiring workers to have a higher skill set to obtain jobs that pay family-supporting wages. The recession also highlighted the fact that workers need both sector- and firm-specific skills as well as connections to employers in order to obtain jobs that pay reasonable wages. However, as middle-skill jobs (e.g., welders, paralegals, radiology technicians, and ...
Journal Article
Federal Government Outlays Remain Historically Elevated, Spurred by Robust Transfers
Over the past six decades, the federal government has shifted a larger share of its outlays toward transfer payments to individuals and state and local governments. These longer-run trends were exacerbated during the pandemic, leading to higher deficits for the federal government and an increasingly high share of federal outlays supporting the economy through consumer spending.
Journal Article
Black-Owned Banks and the Communities They Serve
Black-owned banks have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to their communities and could play a vital role in equitable economic recovery.
Report
The Effect of the Central Bank Liquidity Support during Pandemics: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
The coronavirus outbreak raises the question of how central bank liquidity support affects financial stability and promotes economic recovery. Using newly assembled data on cross-county flu mortality rates and state-charter bank balance sheets in New York State, we investigate the effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic on the banking system and the role of the Federal Reserve during the pandemic. We find that banks located in more severely affected areas experienced deposit withdrawals. Banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System were able to access central bank liquidity, enabling ...
Journal Article
Did the Fiscal Stimulus Work?
Billions were spent to recover from the Great Recession. How can we know whether taxpayers got a decent bang for the buck? More than seven years after the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, economists, legislators, and the American people continue to debate the effectiveness of the measure. The largest U.S. fiscal stimulus since the 1930s, the Recovery Act pumped hundreds of billions of dollars of federal spending and tax cuts into the economy in an effort to stem the massive job losses and steep drop in economic output that characterized the Great Recession. The ...
Working Paper
Have Distressed Neighborhoods Recovered? Evidence from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program
During the 2007-2009 housing crisis, concentrations of foreclosed and vacant properties created severe blight in many cities and neighborhoods. The federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) was established to help mitigate distress in hard-hit areas by funding the rehabilitation or demolition of troubled properties. This paper analyzes housing market changes in areas that received investments during the second round of NSP funding, focusing on seven large urban counties. Grantees used NSP to invest in census tracts with high rates of distressed and vacancy properties, and tracts that ...
Speech
Ethics and economics: making cyclical downturns less severe: remarks at the Fourth Annual O. John Olcay Lecture on Ethics and Economics, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., June 27, 2018
Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said the costs of high unemployment are disproportionately borne by those that can least afford them, and a variety of actions could be taken by policymakers to make periods of high unemployment less likely.
Journal Article
Improving Conditions Could Bode Well for Economic Recovery
While the U.S. economy has been on a roller-coaster ride this year, improving economic indicators could signal a recovery ahead.
Speech
Economic Fragility: Implications for Recovery from the Pandemic
Clearly a deadly pandemic was bound to badly impact the economy. However, I am sorry to say that the slow build-up of risk in the low-interest-rate environment that preceded the current recession likely will make the economic recovery from the pandemic more difficult.