Roundup: Research from Around the St. Louis Fed

Today, we’re highlighting some research the St. Louis Fed has recently produced that you may have missed.

Economic Synopses

Whither the Price of Bitcoin? 
The total value of bitcoin has declined as a share of all cryptocurrencies.

Mapping the U.S. Production Network: Identifying Hub Industries
Identifying key suppliers and buyers could help identify the cause of certain economic downturns.

Review

Racial Gaps, Occupational Matching, and Skill Uncertainty
White workers in the U.S. earn almost 30% more per hour on average than black workers, and this wage gap is associated with large racial differences in occupational assignments. In this article, the authors theoretically and empirically examine the black-white disparity in occupations.

The Real Term Premium in a Stationary Economy with Segmented Asset Markets
This article proposes a general equilibrium model to explain the positive and sizable term premia implied by the data. The authors introduce a slow mean-reverting process of consumption growth and a segmented asset-market mechanism with heterogeneous trading technologies into an otherwise standard heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model. 

Regional Economist

Bourbon and Whiskey Distillers Face Rosy Tourism, Vexing Tariffs
U.S. distillers face retaliatory tariffs abroad, but tourism related to whiskey remains a bright spot.

Debt Levels Continue to Grow in Eighth District’s Key Metro Areas
Consumers keep borrowing, but delinquency rate data do not appear to signal a severe debt problem on the horizon.