Serving the public with innovative research and analysis
Research Spotlight
Liu Discusses Research on Link between Automation and Superstar Firms
Zheng Liu, vice president and Director of our Center for Pacific Basin Studies, sat down recently with Faculti to talk about his working paper with coauthors Hamid Firooz and Yajie Wang, “Automation and the Rise of Superstar Firms.”
In the Faculti interview, Liu explains the empirical link between automation technology and industry concentration over the past two decades, using a general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous firms and variable markups.
Recent Publications
FedViews
Economic Outlook
Andrew Foerster, senior research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of July 13, 2023.
Economic Letter
Will a Cooler Labor Market Slow Supercore Inflation?
Given steady declines in price inflation for core goods and expectations that rent inflation will moderate over time, the outlook for nonhousing core services—or “supercore”—inflation has grown in importance. State-level data document a typically weak relationship between this indicator and unemployment rates, highlighting the stickiness of supercore inflation. The data show that its sensitivity to labor markets strengthened early in the pandemic recovery in connection with strong demand for service workers. However, it’s uncertain whether this sensitivity will remain heightened or return to its persistent pre-pandemic weakness.
Working Paper
Monetary Transmission through Bank Securities Portfolios
We study the transmission of monetary policy through bank securities portfolios for the United States using granular supervisory data on bank securities, hedging positions, and corporate credit. We find that banks that experienced larger market value losses on their securities during the monetary tightening cycle in 2022 extended relatively less credit to firms. Such a spillover effect was stronger for (i) available-for sale securities, (ii) unhedged securities, (iii) low-capitalized banks, and (iv) banks that have to include unrealized gains and losses on their available-for-sale securities in their regulatory capital. Our findings provide evidence for a forceful transmission channel of monetary policy that is shaped by the regulatory framework of the banking system.
Indicators and Data
China Cyclical Activity Tracker
The China Cyclical Activity Tracker, China CAT, is an alternative measure of China's economic growth based on research in Fernald, Hsu, and Spiegel (2019).
Cyclical and Acyclical Core PCE Inflation
Cyclical and Acyclical Core PCE Inflation divides components of core personal consumption expenditures according to whether they move in tandem with economic cycles or are independent of the state of the overall economy.
Daily News Sentiment Index
The Daily News Sentiment Index is a high frequency measure of U.S. economic sentiment based on lexical analysis of economics-related news articles.
Inflation Sensitivity to COVID-19
Inflation Sensitivity to COVID-19 divides core personal consumption expenditures inflation into components that are sensitive and insensitive to the economic disruptions caused by the pandemic.
PCE Inflation Dispersion
PCE Inflation Dispersion statistics present a more detailed summary of the personal consumption expenditure price index (PCEPI), a measure of U.S. inflation. Included are measures of the distribution of price changes across categories and diffusion indices.
Proxy Funds Rate
The Proxy Funds Rate uses a broad set of financial market indicators to assess the stance of monetary policy. The proxy rate can be interpreted as indicating what federal funds rate would typically be associated with prevailing financial market conditions if the federal funds rate were the only monetary policy tool being used.
SF Fed Data Explorer
The SF Fed Data Explorer is an interactive tool that gives users the ability to explore, analyze, and download detailed data for various groups of people in the U.S. labor market. The data come from responses to the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS).
Supply- and Demand-Driven PCE Inflation
Supply- versus Demand-Driven PCE Inflation determines the monthly contributions to both headline and core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation from supply-driven versus demand-driven components.
Total Factor Productivity
Total Factor Productivity (TFP) presents a real-time, quarterly data series for the U.S. business sector, adjusted for variations in factor utilization—labor effort and capital's workweek.
Treasury Yield Premiums
The Treasury yield premium model decomposes nominal bond yields of various maturities into three components: expectations of the average future short-term interest rate, a term premium, and a model residual.
Weather-Adjusted Employment Change
This page provides estimates of weather-adjusted employment change in the United States for the past six months. The estimates are aggregated from county-level estimates of weather's employment effects, which were derived from a county-level analysis of the short-run effects of unusual weather on employment growth.
