ECONOMY
-
Stablecoins and Crypto Shocks – Liberty Street Economics
Kenechukwu Anadu, Pablo D. Azar, Marco Cipriani, Thomas Eisenbach, Catherine Huang, Mattia Landoni, Gabriele La Spada, Marco Macchiavelli, Antoine Malfroy-Camine, and J. Christina Wang In a previous post, we described the rapid growth of the stablecoin market over the past few years and then discussed the TerraUSD stablecoin run of May 2022. The TerraUSD run, however, is not the only…
Read More » -
Expectations and the Final Mile of Disinflation
Richard K. Crump, Stefano Eusepi, and Ayşegül Şahin In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy experienced a swift recovery accompanied by a sharp rise in inflation. Inflation has been gradually declining since 2022 without a notable slowdown in the labor market. Nonetheless, inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target and the path of the so-called…
Read More » -
Can Electric Cars Power China’s Growth?
Thomas Klitgaard China’s aggressive policies to develop its battery-powered electric vehicle (BEV) industry have been successful in making the country the dominant producer of these vehicles worldwide. Going forward, BEVs will likely claim a growing share of global motor vehicle sales, helped along by subsides and mandates implemented in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, China’s success in selling…
Read More » -
Businesses See Inflationary Pressures Moderating
Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz Shortly after the recovery from the pandemic recession began, the U.S. economy entered a period of high inflation as surging demand, severe supply disruptions, and worker shortages combined to create large imbalances and inflationary pressures in the economy. More recently, however, inflationary pressures have been moderating. Indeed, the inflation rate as measured by the…
Read More » -
Auto Loan Delinquency Revs Up as Car Prices Stress Budgets
Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Daniel Mangrum, Joelle Scally, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and Crystal Wang The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2023 this morning. Household debt balances grew by $212 billion over the last quarter. Although there was growth across most loan types, it…
Read More » -
How and Why Do Consumers Use “Buy Now, Pay Later”?
Felix Aidala, Daniel Mangrum, and Wilbert van der Klaauw In a previous post, we highlighted that financially fragile households are disproportionately likely to use “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) payment plans. In this post, we shed further light on BNPL’s place in its users’ household finances, with a particular focus on how use varies by a household’s level of financial…
Read More » -
Measuring Treasury Market Depth – Liberty Street Economics
Michael Fleming, Isabel Krogh, and Claire Nelson A commonly used measure of market liquidity is market depth, which refers to the quantity of securities market participants are willing to buy or sell at particular prices. The market depth of U.S. Treasury securities, in particular, is assessed in many analyses of market functioning, including this Liberty Street Economics post on liquidity…
Read More » -
Racial and Ethnic Wealth Inequality in the Post-Pandemic Era
By Rajashri Chakrabarti, Natalia Emanuel, and Ben Lahey Wealth is unevenly distributed across racial and ethnic groups in the United States. In this first post in a two-part series on wealth inequality, we use the Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) to document these disparities between Black, Hispanic, and white households from the first quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of…
Read More » -
Wealth Inequality by Age in the Post-Pandemic Era
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Natalia Emanuel, and Ben Lahey Editor’s note: Since this post was first published, percentages cited in the first paragraph have been corrected. (February 7, 1pm) Following our post on racial and ethnic wealth gaps, here we turn to the distribution of wealth across age groups, focusing on how the picture has changed since the beginning of the pandemic.…
Read More » -
Small Business Recovery after Natural Disasters in the Fed’s Second District
Asani Sarkar A previous Liberty Street Economics post found that minority-owned small businesses in the Federal Reserve’s Second District have been particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Here we focus on the aftermath of disasters (such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and winter storms) and examine disparities in the ability of these firms to reopen their businesses and access disaster relief.…
Read More »