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Research Spotlight
Essay Contest Deadline Approaching: Apply by December 15
How do gender and racial inequities affect the economy? The “Unlocking Our Potential” essay contest invites doctoral students to share their insights and analysis for a chance to win an internship and cash prize.
We are accepting contest entries through December 15. See the essay contest details in our SF Fed Blog or view the pdf version (130 kb).
Recent Publications
FedViews
Economic Outlook
Daniel Wilson, vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of December 2, 2021.
Economic Letter
Comparing Pandemic Unemployment to Past U.S. Recoveries
Unemployment fell at a slow and steady rate in the 10 cyclical recoveries from 1949 through 2019. These historical patterns also apply to the recovery from the pandemic recession after accounting for the unprecedented burst of temporary layoffs early in the pandemic followed by their rapid reversal from April to November 2020. Unemployment for other reasons—which has been most important in other recent recoveries—did not start declining until November 2020. Since then, unemployment for other reasons has declined at a faster pace than its historical average.
Working Paper
Pricing Poseidon: Extreme Weather Uncertainty and Firm Return Dynamics
We present a framework to identify market responses to uncertainty faced by firms regarding both the potential incidence of extreme weather events and subsequent economic impact. Stock options of firms with establishments in forecast and realized hurricane landfall regions exhibit large increases in implied volatility, reflecting significant incidence uncertainty and long-lasting impact uncertainty. Comparing ex ante expected volatility to ex post realized volatility by analyzing volatility risk premia changes shows that investors significantly underestimate extreme weather uncertainty. After Hurricane Sandy, this underreaction diminishes and, consistent with Merton (1987), these increases in idiosyncratic volatility are associated with positive expected stock returns.
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).
COVID-19 Forecasts by County
COVID-19 Forecasts by County projects future infection growth rates for various horizons using near real-time data on social distancing behavior, weather, vaccinations, and confirmed COVID-19 cases per capita. The forecasts are based on the estimated relationship between transmission factors and subsequent infection growth over the pandemic to date.
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.
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.
Wage Rigidity Meter
The Wage Rigidity Meter offers a closer examination of the annual wage changes of U.S. workers that have not changed jobs over the year.
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.
