Serving the public with innovative research and analysis
Research Spotlight
2022 Pacific Basin Research Conference: Call for Papers
Our Center for Pacific Basin Studies will host its 2022 Pacific Basin Research Conference on November 18, 2022, at the San Francisco Fed. Researchers can submit papers for consideration by August 15, 2022. Read our Call for Papers for more details.
Recent Publications
FedViews
Economic Outlook
Jens Christensen, research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of July 14, 2022.
Economic Letter
Two Years into COVID, What’s the State of U.S. Businesses?
More than two years after the outbreak of COVID-19, concerns remain that U.S. businesses are substantially more vulnerable and less productive than in the past. Using extensive data on private and public firms allows for a detailed assessment of these concerns. According to a number of performance measures, businesses borrowing from large U.S. banks appear relatively healthy, increased leverage is concentrated among safer companies rather than riskier ones, and probabilities of default are close to pre-crisis levels.
Working Paper
A Sufficient Statistics Approach for Macro Policy Evaluation
The evaluation of macroeconomic policy decisions has traditionally relied on the formulation of a specific economic model. In this work, we show that two statistics are sufficient to detect, often even correct, non-optimal policies, i.e., policies that do not minimize the loss function. The two sufficient statistics are (i) the effects of policy shocks on the policy objectives, and (ii) forecasts for the policy objectives conditional on the policy decision. Both statistics can be estimated without relying on a specific model. We illustrate the method by studying US monetary policy decisions.
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
This page will no longer be updated after May 31, 2022. 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.
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.
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.
