May 7, 2024
Robert Leigh, Ana Pranger, Yichen Su and Mariam Yousuf
Texas economic activity expanded at a modest pace in April. While the manufacturing sector rebounded, the service sector slowed. Texas employment growth was moderate in the first quarter, slightly above the state’s roughly 2 percent long-run trend, and the unemployment rate held steady.
April 2, 2024
Alexander W. Richter and Xiaoqing Zhou
The direct impact of higher mortgage rates on housing affordability has received much attention. We emphasize that housing affordability not only depends on mortgage rates but also on house prices, which have competing effects.
March 28, 2024
Jesus Cañas and Diego Morales-Burnett
A majority of Texas Business Outlook Surveys participants expect increasing demand over the next six months, signaling an improving business outlook, even as inflation and wage growth in Texas remain elevated.
March 26, 2024
Enrique Martínez García and Braden Strackman
The U.S. economy boasts robust growth and slowing inflation despite the highest interest rates in two decades. Such performance isn’t common globally, especially among other advanced economies, revealing crucial differences in the fundamental factors driving inflation and growth.
March 5, 2024
Anton Cheremukhin
At first glance, it seems unlikely that the unemployment rate would remain stable if the number of job vacancies decreased. However, such a scenario played out recently as the number of firms seeking to fill positions by poaching employees from other firms increased, while the ranks of the unemployed remained relatively stable.
February 20, 2024
Tyler Atkinson and Ron Mau
As money demand changes, and in particular as money velocity fluctuates with interest rates, this relationship can become unstable with money growth providing limited useful information for inflation forecasting.
February 13, 2024
Andrew J. Fieldhouse and Karel Mertens
Our estimates indicate that government-funded R&D accounts for roughly one quarter of all business sector productivity growth since World War II, including one quarter of the deceleration in productivity growth since the late 1960s.
February 6, 2024
Emily Kerr and Ana Pranger
Texas economic growth remains healthy while gradually reverting to a more historically normal pace of expansion following the pandemic when a bust in the first half of 2020 preceded a subsequent boom.
January 16, 2024
Pon Sagnanert and Xiaoqing Zhou
After comparing economic data of the U.S. and other major advanced economies, we find tentative evidence that the slow adjustment of the outstanding mortgage rate in the U.S. has not played an important role in delaying the intended effects of the monetary tightening.
January 9, 2024
Philippe Bacchetta, J. Scott Davis and Eric van Wincoop
U.S. dollars are hard to find in foreign markets during times of heightened risk, as evidenced by two interesting and related features in the post-2007 international financial landscape.