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Around the District: Exploring Grain Exports in Oregon
Executive Vice President of Public Engagement, Laura Choi, recently visited Columbia Grain International, a global company that sources, processes, and distributes agricultural products based in Oregon.
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Weather-Adjusted Employment Change
The Weather-Adjusted Employment Change data page provides estimates of monthly weather-adjusted employment changes in the United States.
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Global Current Account Adjustment: A Decomposition
The rising current account deficit in the USA has attracted considerable attention in recent years. We use the "business cycle accounting" methodology to identify the principal distortions that have affected the external accounts of the US. In particular, we measure distortions in the optimality conditions of a simple two-country general equilibrium model using data from…
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What If Foreign Governments Diversified Their Reserves?
World financial markets paid close attention when officials from both South Korea and Japan said that their governments were considering diversifying their holdings of foreign reserves (Dougherty 2005 and Koizumi 2005). Many analysts thought these announcements were partly in response to the past depreciation of the dollar; if true, then it seemed likely that those…
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Strengthening Financial Health in Times of Crisis
COVID-19 makes it clearer than ever that inclusion in the financial system is critical for households and businesses to access timely relief funds. Distributing funds at scale, however, presents numerous challenges, including issues related to technology and communication. To explore what it takes to have an inclusive financial system, Laura Choi sat down with Leigh…
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Boomer Retirement: Headwinds for U.S. Equity Markets?
Historical data indicate a strong relationship between the age distribution of the U.S. population and stock market performance. A key demographic trend is the aging of the baby boom generation. As they reach retirement age, they are likely to shift from buying stocks to selling their equity holdings to finance retirement. Statistical models suggest that…
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FedViews: June 2, 2022
Mark Spiegel, senior policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of June 2, 2022.
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SF Fed Launches Tool to Forecast COVID-19 Infections by County
Using the latest data on social distancing behavior, weather, vaccinations, and confirmed COVID-19 cases per capita, our Economic Research team’s new data page forecasts changes in COVID-19 infection rates across U.S. counties. Economist Dan Wilson explains how this new tool uses recent statistics to help project future infection growth.
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Monetary Policy and Exchange Rates in Small Open Economies
Controlling inflation is a key concern of central bankers around the world. But how best to control inflation differs across countries according to their individual characteristics; for example, small open economies tend to import more goods as a percentage of GDP than larger, more closed, economies, such as the United States.
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Why Is Inflation Low Globally?
A hot economy eventually boosts inflation. Such is the simple wisdom of the Phillips curve. Yet inflation across developed countries has been remarkably weak since the 2008 global financial crisis, even though unemployment rates are near historical lows. What is behind this recent disconnect between inflation and unemployment? Contrasting the experiences of developed and developing…