Economic activity continued to expand across most regions and sectors from early January through mid-February. Six Federal Reserve districts, including St. Louis, reported that their local economies expanded at moderate paces since the release of the previous Beige Book. An audio summary of St. Louis District conditions, presented by St. Louis Fed economist Rubén Hernández-Murillo, is also available.
Who is thriving and who is struggling financially in the U.S. today? A new series of essays from the Center for Household Financial Stability addresses that question. The center is researching the link between wealth accumulation and race, age and education. In the first essay, on race, the authors analyze 25 years’ worth of data to shed light on financial decision-making, balance-sheet choices and wealth outcomes for white, black, Hispanic and Asian families. Read the report and watch the video.
In the latest edition of “Connecting Policy with Frontier Research,” based on interviews conducted at the 39th Annual Fall Conference, presenters discuss their research in plain English with Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Economist David Andolfatto. The papers presented at the conference covered topics such as the Affordable Care Act, mandatory disclosure requirements of banks and the impact of states’ higher education subsidies on young people’s education and migration decisions.
Large firms have been creating a significantly higher fraction of jobs since the Great Recession. And because poaching offers to hire employees from small firms by large firms and wage gains are often linked, this feature of labor dynamics could explain the slow growth in wages. Read more on the On the Economy blog.
In The Regional Economist, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard discussed the 1994 and 2004-06 normalization cycles and lessons that can be learned from them. For the upcoming normalization cycle, he said that the data dependency from the 1994 case plus the transparency from the 2004-06 case would probably provide the optimal method of returning the policy rate to normal.
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard evaluated FOMC forecasts for 2014 and discussed implications for monetary policy in 2015. During an event in Chicago, he noted that the FOMC has been surprised in the same way two years in a row regarding its forecasts. He said that the nature of the surprise pulls the FOMC in two different directions on monetary policy.
Press Release | Presentation (PDF)
Workforce participation has declined among those 16 to 24, but there may be good reasons for this. An analysis by age, gender and education looks at who is in school and who is not.
In many ways, the European debt crisis is reminiscent of Latin America's experience in the 1980s, characterized by a period of high growth interrupted by an external shock. But there are some notable differences.
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