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Working Paper
Technology and the Task Content of Jobs across the Development Spectrum
The tasks workers perform on the job are informative about the direction and the impact of technological change. We harmonize occupational task content measures between two worker-level surveys, which separately cover developing and developed countries. Developing countries use routine-cognitive tasks and routine-manual tasks more intensively than developed countries, but less intensively use non-routine analytical tasks and non-routine interpersonal tasks. This is partly because developing countries have more workers in occupations with high routine contents and fewer workers in occupations ...
Working Paper
Technological Innovation in Mortgage Underwriting and the Growth in Credit: 1985-2015
The application of information technology to finance, or ?fintech,? is expected to revolutionize many aspects of borrowing and lending in the future, but technology has been reshaping consumer and mortgage lending for many years. During the 1990s computerization allowed mortgage lenders to reduce loan-processing times and largely replace human-based assessment of credit risk with default predictions generated by sophisticated empirical models. Debt-to-income ratios at origination add little to the predictive power of these models, so the new automated underwriting systems allowed higher ...
Newsletter
Automation and the Minimum Wage
This issue explains how a higher mandated minimum wage may lead some firms to substitute capital for labor, likely reducing job opportunities.
Working Paper
Technological innovation in mortgage underwriting and the growth in credit, 1985–2015
The application of information technology to finance, or ?fintech,? is expected to revolutionize many aspects of borrowing and lending in the future, but technology has been reshaping consumer and mortgage lending for many years. During the 1990s, computerization allowed mortgage lenders to reduce loan-processing times and largely replace human-based assessments of credit risk with default predictions generated by sophisticated empirical models. Debt-to-income ratios at origination add little to the predictive power of these models, so the new automated underwriting systems allowed higher ...
Working Paper
The Evolution of Comparative Advantage: Measurement and Implications
We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at greater comparative disadvantage. These changes have had a significant impact on trade volumes and patterns, and a non-negligible welfare impact. In the counterfactual scenario in which each country's comparative advantage remained the same as in the 1960s, and technology in all sectors grew at the ...
Working Paper
The Role of Technology and Energy Substitution in Climate Change Mitigation
Mitigating climate change is critically linked to reducing an economy’s reliance on fossil energy. This paper examines U.S. energy dependence, measured by its factor share, using a neoclassical framework in a systematic way. We propose substitution as a simple, explicit economic mechanism for climate change mitigation and understanding energy-saving technical change in terms of observed factor quantities. We show that with time-varying capital equipment and energy substitutability, changes in observed inputs alone can account for most of the variations in the income share of energy over the ...
Speech
Welcome remarks at First New York Fed Fintech Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City
Remarks at the First New York Fed Fintech Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City.
Working Paper
Technological Change and Financial Innovation in Banking: Some Implications for Fintech
Financial intermediation has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, due in large part to technological change. The paper first describes the role of the financial system in a modern economy and how technological change and financial innovation can affect social welfare. We then survey the empirical literatures relating to several specific financial innovations, broadly categorized as new production processes, new products or services, or new organizational forms. In each case, we also include examples of significant fintech innovations that are transforming various aspects of banking. ...