Serving the public with innovative research and analysis
Research Spotlight
Monras Wins Award for Best Spanish Economist under 40
Joan Monras, Research Advisor at the SF Fed and Professor of Economics at the Pompeu Fabra University, has been awarded the 22nd Banco Sabadell Foundation Award for Economic Research for his innovative research in the field of immigration.
Monras’s research focuses on the fields of labor economics, urban economics, and international trade. His articles examine the effect of immigration on the labor market and how local economies adjust to economic shocks and policy changes. He has also studied how immigration and racial disparities affect the geographical distribution of economic activity.
Recent Publications
FedViews
Economic Outlook
Sylvain Leduc, executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of September 7, 2023.
Economic Letter
How Much Do Work Interruptions Reduce Mothers’ Wages?
Women experience large and persistent declines in earnings after having children, which in part reflects fewer hours worked while children are young. Recent studies of large policy-induced changes in mothers’ work experience in the 1990s quantify the impact of avoiding lengthy work interruptions after childbirth. The analysis shows that mothers who return to work a year sooner after childbirth earn 5-6% higher wages 10 to 20 years later. Thus, policies that encourage mothers’ return to work can lead to large improvements in their lifetime earnings.
Working Paper
Productivity in the World Economy During and After the Pandemic
This paper reviews how productivity has evolved around the world since the pandemic began in 2020. Productivity in many countries has been volatile. We conclude that the broad contours of productivity growth during this period have been heavily shaped by predictable cyclical patterns. Looking at U.S. industry data, we find little evidence that the sharp rise in telework has had a notable impact, good or bad, on productivity. Stepping back, the data so far appear consistent with a continuation of the slow-productivity-growth trajectory that we faced before the pandemic.
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. This page is no longer being updated and will be discontinued as of September 30, 2023.
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.
