ECONOMY
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Stress and Strain from NBFIs to Banks
Viral V. Acharya, Nicola Cetorelli, and Bruce Tuckman Do the recent stresses in the NBFI space—notably the bankruptcies of Tricolor and First Brands, and the decision of Blue Owl Capital Corp II (OBDC II) to end its redemption program and return capital through a wind-down of the fund—create distress for banks? The general sentiment is that the recent stresses are…
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In What Ways Has U.S. Trade with China Changed?
Hunter L. Clark and Gregory Simitian Over the past year, U.S. trade policy with China has undergone enormous changes, but with surprisingly little effect on overall trade balances. In fact, the U.S.’s twelve-month trade deficit, while highly volatile due to import front-running early in the year, ended 2025 at $1.2 trillion, almost unchanged from 2024. At the same time, China’s trade…
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Explaining the K-Shaped Economy: What’s Behind the Divide?
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy In our companion post, we used a new module of our Economic Heterogeneity Indicators (EHIs) to shed light on how recent retail spending growth has been driven by high-income households. This fact is consistent with the popular press’s idea of a “K-shaped economy” in which higher-income households experience faster growth…
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What Millions of Homeowner’s Insurance Contracts Reveal About Risk Sharing
Hyeyoon Jung and Jaehoon (Kyle) Jung Housing is the largest component of assets held by households in the United States, totaling $48 trillion in 2025. When natural disasters strike, the resulting damage to homes can be large relative to households’ liquid savings. Homeowner’s insurance is the primary financial tool households use to protect themselves against property risk. Despite the economic…
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The R*–Labor Share Nexus – Liberty Street Economics
Sophia Cho and John C. Williams Over the past quarter century, the U.S. economy has experienced significant declines in both the labor share of income and the natural rate of interest, referred to as R*. Existing research has largely analyzed these two developments in isolation. In this post, we provide a simple model that captures the joint evolution of the…
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Bank Failures: The Roles of Solvency and Liquidity
Bank Failures in the United States, 1863–2024 Source: “Bank Failures: The Roles of Solvency and Liquidity,” Correia, Luck, and Verner (2026a). Bank Failures: The Theory Bank failures can stem from two related but distinct sources. Under the liquidity view, a sudden wave of withdrawals forces a bank to liquidate assets at fire-sale discounts, rendering it insolvent. Runs can thus trigger…
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Use of Gen AI in the Workplace and the Value of Access to Training
Ali Hashim, Gizem Kosar, and Wilbert van der Klaauw The rapid spread of generative AI (AI) tools is reshaping the workplace at a remarkable rate. Yet relatively little is known about whether workers have access to these tools, how the tools affect workers’ daily productivity, and how much workers value the training needed to use the tools effectively. In this…
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A Closer Look at Emerging Market Resilience During Recent Shocks
Hunter L. Clark, Jeffrey B. Dawson, and Julian Gonzalez-Murphy A succession of shocks to the global economy in recent years has focused attention on the improved economic and financial resilience of emerging market economies. For some of these economies, this assessment is well-founded and highlights the fruits of deep, structural economic reforms since the 1990s. However, for a much larger…
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The Fed Has Two Tools to Influence Money Market Conditions
Adam Copeland and Owen Engbretson The Federal Reserve’s 2022-23 tightening cycle involved the use of two monetary policy tools: changes in administrative rates and changes in the size of its balance sheet. This post highlights the results of a recent Staff Report that explores how these tools affect money market conditions. Using confidential trade-level data, we find that both tools have significant…
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Behind the ATM: Exploring the Structure of Bank Holding Companies
Lily Gordon and Lee Seltzer Many modern banking organizations are highly complex. A “bank” is often a larger structure made up of distinct entities, each subject to different regulatory, supervisory, and reporting requirements. For researchers and policymakers, understanding how these institutions are structured and how they have evolved over time is essential. In this post, we illustrate what a modern…
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