Mexico, confronting a high rate of COVID-19 infection and an ineffectual medical response, recorded the largest decline in gross domestic product in a quarter century last year. While manufacturing trade with the U.S. provided economic support, the large and hard to reach off-the-books informal sector proved more troublesome and will play an important role in the nation’s performance in 2021.
Recessions are hardest on minorities; the COVID-19 downturn is no different in that regard. More than half of Texas’ population is Hispanic or Black and the consequences are far-reaching if those groups lag behind economically.
Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association, discusses how the dining industry survived COVID-19 and the changes that have occurred.
Alan D. Viard, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, studies tax and budget policy. A former senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Viard discusses how to address the U.S. budget deficit in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cash is king when it comes to completing transactions in Mexico. Unlike the U.S., where consumers opt to pay with debit and credit cards or via apps, Mexico and its large informal economy continue to rely on hard cash. A new digital payment platform from the nation’s central bank aims to reduce the role of currency.
A change in the number of active drilling rigs is no longer the reliable predictor for near-term oil production growth that it once was.
Approval of the United States–Mexico– Canada Agreement (USMCA) could change trade within the North American region, affecting output and weakening North America’s global competitiveness. At the same time, while Mexico is achieving some temporary gains arising from trade tension between the U.S. and China, it stands to incur a substantial overall long-term economic cost.
Recent analysis suggests that enhanced unemployment insurance benefits implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have helped buttress spending among the unemployed and supported state and local economies. Their economic impact in Texas relative to the nation has been constrained by lower levels of participation in the unemployment aid programs and more modest per-capita payments from them.
After absorbing a big hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy sector may take until 2022 to recover.
A resurgent COVID-19 outbreak in Texas has stymied a state economic recovery, according to the Texas Business Outlook Surveys and high-frequency data that document activity on a more granular level.
Our research is critical to helping the Federal Reserve better understand labor markets and underlying economic conditions so we can more effectively achieve our dual-mandate objectives.
Business interruption and social distancing mandates because of COVID-19 have disrupted what had been a period of sustained growth within city centers nationally and in Texas. The pandemic-related actions have helped propel a sudden, large shift from renting to homeownership and a concurrent movement to the suburbs and larger homes.
The COVID–19-induced global economic downturn shuttered businesses that have begun slowly reopening and reassessing whether to recall laid-off employees. In the U.S., black unemployment rates have spiked much more than white jobless rates during recessions.
Fang Yang, associate professor of economics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, discusses the labor market impacts of tax policy, an evolving U.S. workforce, the effects of gender and an aging population.
Gary A. Hoover holds a President’s Associates Presidential Professorship and is chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He specializes in policy analysis of income distribution and poverty, public finance and ethics in economics.
Janie Barrera is the founding president and chief executive officer of San Antonio-based LiftFund. Created in 1994, LiftFund has one of the nation’s largest microlending portfolios. The nonprofit provides loans and management training to very small enterprises in Texas and seven other states.
