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2025-09-11

• Trends in US labor force participation rates for men
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-09-11 13:00:00 UTC

  The labor force participation rate (LFPR)—the percentage of civilians employed or actively seeking work—has declined since the turn of the century as shown in our first FRED graph above. Previously, total LFPR had risen after an increase in women entering the workforce and a corresponding but smaller drop in men’s LFPR. Since 1990, women’s LFPR has stabilized but men’s LFPR has continued to decline at an average rate of 2.7 percentage points per decade. Our second FRED graph above splits male workers into three age groups—15 to 24 (high school and college age); 25 to 54 (prime working age); [...]

2025-09-08

• Afghanistan: Losing the Republic
  by Sarkar,N in India at LSE, 2025-09-08 00:53:05 UTC

  Afghanistan’s Republic (2001–21) did not fall only because the US left or because the Taliban captured territory and adapted faster than expected. As Basir Arian argues, it collapsed because of a variety of systemic reasons leading to a crisis of everyday legitimacy in the Republic, leading to an inevitable collapse. * Most post-mortems of the dramatic collapse of the Republic in Afghanistan in August 2021 emphasise proximate triggers: the Doha Agreement , the timetable of withdrawal and Taliban adaptation. These did matter. Yet the decisive pathway ran through corruption, which widened [...]

2025-08-25

• Overdue mortgage payments by property type : New data insights from the Philadelphia Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-08-25 13:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed the dwindling supply of multifamily dwellings with 2 to 4 units. This trend even has its own name: the “missing middle.” Today, we tap into newly added data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to offer additional insights into this segment of the housing market. Our FRED graph above shows the share of mortgage balances that are 60 or more days past due, broken down by property type: single family (solid blue line) condo/co-op (dotted light blue line) 2 to 4 units (dashed orange line) townhouse/planned (dashed-dotted purple line). Quarterly data are avai [...]

2025-07-24

• What is authoritarian backscratching – and why is this a threat?
  by Isabelle DeSisto in The Monkey Cage, 2025-07-24 13:48:58 UTC

  Quid pro quo policies help authoritarian regimes stay in power. Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Saint Petersburg, Russia, June 2022 (cc) Kremlin.ru , via Wikimedia Commons. Even the most isolated authoritarian regimes cannot survive completely on their own. North Korea may be the model pariah state, but it still relies on allies – like China and Russia – to provide basic goods like raw materials and food . Still, as every good dictator knows, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In one recent example, Russia secretly transferred over a [...]

• International comovement in economic indicators : Recent insights from the Richmond Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-07-24 13:00:00 UTC

  FRED has data from multiple sources that can help reveal correlations between macroeconomic indicators and policy variables across major economies. For example, the FRED Blog has discussed international comovements in monetary policy before. Today, we dig deeper into economic comovement by looking at recent research from the Richmond Fed. Researchers Katherine Anderson, Paul Ho, and Nathan Robino used GDP and inflation data from 27 countries between 1981 and 2023 to study how much the U.S. economy moves in parallel with other countries. They found substantial correlations among all countries: [...]

2025-06-16

• IAREP Kahneman Lecture: Economic Psychology and Behavioural Public Policy
  by Liam Delaney in Economics, Psychology and Policy, 2025-06-16 22:23:00 UTC

  Those masterful images because complete / Grew in pure mind but out of what began? / A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, / Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, / Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut / Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. WB Yeats - The Circus Animals' Desertion I will be giving one of the keynote lectures at the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology in Estonia in June. The talk will outline ideas on the role of economic psyc [...]

2025-06-12

• Lard prices during the world wars
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-06-12 13:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed the economic impact of war on labor markets and energy prices . Today, we discuss the impact on the price of lard . Stay with us, here… Our FRED graph above shows data from the NBER’s Macrohistory Database on the retail and wholesale prices of lard in New York between 1911 and 1943. There were very large price swings during that time, so let’s break it down: Between 1911 and early 1916, lard prices were stable in the range of $0.10 – $0.15 per pound, even though World War I began in 1914 and the US didn’t enter the conflict until almost three years later. Between [...]

2025-05-28

• California Leads the Charge in Systematically Dismantling US Federal Antitrust Law
  by Lazar Radic in Truth on the Market, 2025-05-28 17:12:22 UTC

  The California Law Revision Commission (CLRC) is currently reviewing proposed amendments to the state’s antitrust statutes, particularly the Cartwright Act. As made clear in a recently published memo , a major goal of the effort is clearly to distance California from the perceived constraints of federal antitrust law that limit liability for single-firm conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.  California intends to achieve this by strategically overturning specific U.S. Supreme Court decisions and departing from the error-cost framework that has traditionally shaped federal antit [...]

2025-04-29

• The lives of precarious workers in Western China
  by ? in LSE Review of Books, 2025-04-29 11:21:26 UTC

  The Precariat in Western China by Xueyang Ma examines the experiences of workers in precarious employment in Ya’an, a city in Sichuan province, Western China. Drawing on interviews with workers and using Amartya Sen’s capability framework, the [...]

2025-04-25

• Improving legal transparency at the RBI
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-04-25 08:15:00 UTC

  by Amol Kulkarni and Renuka Sane. A core function of several Indian regulators is adjudication, which involves investigating potential violations, determining culpability, and imposing appropriate sanctions. In India, most financial sector regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), issue reasoned orders outlining the investigation, findings, and the rationale behind the imposed sanctions (SEBI, ADJ; IRDAI, ENF). These orders are not only accessible to the concerned parties but are also made [...]

2025-04-21

• When Did The Marginalist Theory Of Labor Markets Become Obsolete?
  by Robert Vienneau in Thoughts on Economics, 2025-04-21 11:05:00 UTC

  Chemists once believed, before Lavoisier and Priestly discovered oxygen, in the theory of phlogiston. Physicists, before Galileo, believed in the impetus theory of motion. Academic economists once believed that, in competitive markets, wages and employment tend to the point of intersection of supply and demand curves. The supply curve is supposed to slope up, showing that with a higher real wage, the hours offered for employment increase. The demand curve slopes down, modeling a smaller quantity demanded of labor services at higher wages. A short-run and long-run version of the theory existe [...]

2025-04-17

• The FTC’s Zombie Antitrust Action Against Meta Continues to Lurch Forward
  by Daniel J. Gilman in Truth on the Market, 2025-04-17 19:11:47 UTC

  FTC v. Meta Platforms Inc. has gone to court, and trial is just underway in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that Meta is currently, in 2025, engaged in monopolization in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by dint of having acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Quasi-spoiler alert: I’m going to discuss various aspects of the case, burdened by a nagging question: What’s the point of the FTC’s lawsuit? It’s a simple question, but I’m not sure I have a good answer. I have reviewed, among other things, the [...]

2025-04-03

• Beyond loyalty: restoring technocratic leadership in Indonesia’s democracy
  by Rifky Pratama Wicaksono in Development Policy Blog, 2025-04-03 19:00:43 UTC

  Indonesia is currently entering a new chapter under President Prabowo Subianto and the Merah Putih Cabinet. Yet, this chapter opens with a government structure that is increasingly complex, with new institutions being created and existing ones divided. These structural shifts affect organisational hierarchies, budget allocations and personnel assignments across government bodies. The balance between political loyalty and professional competence in leadership appointments is important. However, the selection of cabinet and strategic institutional leaders has increasingly prioritised political a [...]

2025-03-31

• Do delinquency rates anticipate recessions?
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-03-31 13:00:00 UTC

  Recent research has linked macroeconomic shocks with household financial distress. For instance, José Mustre-del-Río, Juan M. Sánchez, Ryan Mather, and Kartik Athreya show that regions with a higher share of credit card delinquency had more severe responses to macroeconomic shocks during the past two recessions. This post takes the topic a step further by exploring whether delinquency rates for households and businesses can help anticipate recessions. We use delinquency rates on business loans and credit card loans for all banks, published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Syst [...]

2025-03-11

• Evaluating India's Customs Authority for Advance Rulings (CAAR) and charting a path for reform
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-03-11 12:12:00 UTC

  by Vijay Singh Chauhan, Prashant Narang, and Monika Yadav. Advance rulings are critical for trade facilitation - they offer clarity on tariff classifications, customs duties, and valuation, enabling importers and exporters to navigate complex regulatory environments with confidence. India's journey with advance rulings began in 1999 with the establishment of the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR), which handled both direct and indirect tax matters. However, the AAR faced severe criticism for its procedural inefficiencies and delays. As one senior customs consultant quoted in the paper not [...]

2025-02-12

• The Effect of Monetary and Exchange Rate Frameworks on Exports: Evidence from Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Economies
  by ParconHC@bsp.gov.ph (Hazel Parcon-Santos) in Asia Economics Blog, 2025-02-12 12:25:29 UTC

  Co-author:  Jose Adlai M. Tancangco   The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was established in 2020, with effect in 2022, for the purpose of deepening regional economic integration among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the association's free trade agreement partners ( ASEAN.org ). RCEP comprises 15 Asia-Pacific economies: Brunei (BRN), Cambodia (KHM), Indonesia (IDN), Laos (LAO), Malaysia (MYS), Myanmar (MMR), the Philippines (PHL), Singapore (SGP), Thailand (THA), Vietnam (VNM), Australia (AUS), China (CHN), Japan (JPN), Korea (KOR), and New [...]

2025-02-06

• The implications of employer-to-employer transitions on inflation dynamics
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-02-06 14:00:00 UTC

  Employer-to-employer (EE) transitions are when workers move from one job to another without being unemployed in between. EE transitions are important for the aggregate economy for several reasons. Persons typically change jobs when they’re offered higher salaries, so an economy with a high EE rate may have a higher level of labor earnings and more demand for goods and services. EE transitions also facilitate the reallocation of workers across jobs, so an economy with a high EE rate may have higher productivity and thus a higher supply of goods and services. As a result, the EE transition ra [...]

2025-01-06

• Regional differences in medical care prices
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-01-06 14:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has tapped into US Bureau of Economic Analysis data before to discuss the small regional differences in the price of goods and the much larger regional differences in the price of housing. Today, we tap into US Bureau of Labor Statistics data to compare differences in medical care consumer prices across urban areas. The FRED graph above shows the annual inflation rate, calculated as the percent growth rate from the previous year, in medical care service prices recorded in eight core-based statistical areas (CBSAs). These geographies are urban clusters with high degrees of social [...]

2025-01-02

• Financial Inclusion, Wealth, and Consumption Smoothing in India
  by a.kumar@soton.ac.uk (Abhishek Kumar) in Asia Economics Blog, 2025-01-02 00:54:00 UTC

  This post draws from a paper presented at the 2025 Allied Social Science Association Annual Meeting in the ACAES session on Digitalization in Asian Economies.� � Co-Authors: Sushanta Mallick and Apra Sinha Financial technology (fintech) is transforming household access to financial services. For households previously excluded from formal financial markets, fintech offers a pathway to financial stability, enabling consumption smoothing against income fluctuations and more effective responses to emergencies. However, use of fintech carries potential risks as well. Digital financial products may [...]

2024-12-26

• The rising average value-weighted maturity of car loans : Driving cars longer or borrowing more to buy them?
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-12-26 14:00:00 UTC

  Buckle up and come along on a joyful ride with FRED. Like a three-point turn, this post covers the average maturity of new and used car loans by making three maneuvers. First, we define the terms. The maturity of a car loan is the target date for full repayment of the borrowed amount. It can be reported in years or months. A value-weighted maturity refers to assigning more importance to loans that are for a larger percentage of the vehicle’s value. Second, we describe the data. The FRED graph above shows data from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on the value-weighted aver [...]

2024-12-24

• We Need More Three Mile Islands
  by André Béliveau in Hit & Run blog, 2024-12-24 11:30:15 UTC

  Jane Fonda isn't a nuclear expert, but she played one on TV. In the 1979 film The China Syndrome , Fonda portrayed Kimberly Wells, a vivacious news reporter who discovered a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. The conspiracy involved the possibility of a meltdown that could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable."  The movie's timing and location were both impeccable. Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania partially melted down. The accident resu [...]

2024-12-20

• The US Economy’s Trust Deficit
  by Michael Spence in Project Syndicate, 2024-12-20 16:47:48 UTC

  MILAN – While official sources and the media highlight strong consumer-spending and jobs data in the United States, or tout high US stock-market valuations , more than three-quarters of Americans view economic conditions as poor (36%) or fair (41%). This disconnect between performance and perception can have far-reaching consequences; it already helped to propel Donald Trump to victory in last month’s presidential election. So, what is causing it? Here, it is worth considering how market participants deal with asymmetric information – when one party has more or better information than anothe [...]

2024-12-09

• Employer-to-employer transitions : Data from the Philadelphia Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-12-09 14:00:00 UTC

  Workers switch employers for several reasons, including better opportunities and pay. Working for one employer one month and a different employer the next is known as employer-to-employer worker transition . FRED recently added new data from Fujita, Moscarini, and Postel-Vinay (FMP) that track these transitions: The Employer-to-Employer (E2E) Transition Probability data, from the Philadelphia Fed, show how likely US workers are to engage in the practice of switching employers. The FRED graph above shows the FMP-E2E data series presented in three formats: seasonally adjusted (orange line), not [...]

2024-11-22

• Why Subsidizing Energy Efficency Is a Bad Idea
  by Kenneth W. Costello in The Beacon, 2024-11-22 01:04:37 UTC

  Many state utility regulators, policymakers, utilities, and others construct an orthodox and politically palatable argument that market failure justifies utility energy efficiency (EE) programs and that the vast majority of those programs would pass a cost-benefit test. (Incidentally, the alleged major culprits of market failure are energy consumers incapable of making the correct calculations from a societal perspective, or making decisions contrary to their self-interest. That so-called “ EE gap ” provides the raison d’etre for both government and utility subsidies to encourage the adoption [...]

2024-11-05

• To Prosper, India Must Close Its Gender Employment Gap
  by Kanika Mahajan in Project Syndicate, 2024-11-05 14:34:16 UTC

  NEW DELHI – While female workforce participation consistently lags behind men’s globally, there are deep regional disparities, with the largest gender employment gaps found in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and South Asia. India is a striking example of this dynamic. Among women aged 25-60 in rural areas, the labor-market participation rate dropped sharply from 54% in 1980 to 31% in 2017 (National Sample Survey (1980) and Periodic Labor Force Survey (2017)). In urban areas, the decline has been less dramatic, from 26% to 24%. Meanwhile, male employment rates remained relatively stab [...]

2024-10-11

• Can Claudia Sheinbaum Escape AMLO’s Shadow?
  by Guillermo Ortiz in Project Syndicate, 2024-10-11 13:05:20 UTC

  MEXICO CITY – When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico in 2018, the question was which AMLO – as he is commonly known – would govern. Would he be the pragmatic politician who had pledged fiscal rectitude, advocated free trade, and supported an independent central bank? Or would he be a populist leader who, like the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of the 1970s and 1980s, would seek to co-opt voters through enormous social programs and giveaways and expand the role of state enterprises? AMLO’s presidency preserved economic stability by adhering to [...]