A number of policies have been recently introduced to reduce US trade dependence in critical goods.The concern behind these policies is that shocks can disrupt access to these critical goods, which can have devastating consequences for the US economy.For instance, the US enacted the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to increase domestic production of semiconductors to bypass sources such as Taiwan, which is subject to increasing geopolitical risks.We study whether growing concern about US-China relations has begun to reshape bilateral trade flows of critical and non-critical goods, and how it contrasts with the trend of the past three decades. Evolution of US Imports from China: Growth and ReversalWe begin by examining the composition of US imports over time across a sample of countries.Figure 1 shows that the share of US imports from China increased systematically over the past 30 years-from 4.8% in 1992 to a peak
L ife expectancy in rich countries is generally higher than it is in poor countries, but the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor countries has been closing over the past 50 years.Several economists have noted this cross-country convergence in life expectancy. 1 Life expectancy in a given year is the additional number of years that a person at a given age could expect to live on average given the age-specific survival rates in that year.For example, the life expectancy in 2023 involves using 2023 age-specific survival rates for every age; that is, the survival rates for 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds, etc.A person's life expectancy can change over their lifetime if the agespecific survival rates change.
T he region in which individuals live in the U.S. affects the financial distress and consumption patterns of households.For example, according to Athreya, Mather, Mustre-del-Rio, and Sánchez (2019), the past two recessions more adversely affected the consumption of residents in poorer regions.In this essay, we delve into the recent evolution of per capita auto loans in regions with different income levels.Using the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we estimate the amount of auto loans per person aged 20 to 64 in each quarter.We adjust this variable for inflation using personal consumption expenditures price index data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, such that the numbers correspond to dollars in the first quarter of 2024.We divide U.S. zip codes into 10 quantiles based on per capita aggregate gross income in 2019, using IRS individual income tax zip code data from SOI
P olicymakers and economists in the euro area, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been discussing how to complete the normalization of their central bank balance sheets-that is, how to reduce their holdings of securities to an "optimal" level without causing financial stress.But, as Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller has pointed out, no economic theory prescribes the optimal size of central bank asset holdings.In the United States, the counterpart liability to the Fed's holdings on its balance sheet is bank reserves.So, the discussion centers on how to reduce these reserves while avoiding a replay of the September 2019 spike in money market rates, which occurred at the end of the Fed's previous episode of quantitative tightening (QT) that began in October 2017.The amount of bank reserves (quantity) and money market conditions, including rates (price), deemed appropriate to maintain adequate system liquidity are two of the key metrics for determining when
T he reallocation of economic activity away from manufacturing toward the services sector is a notable feature of advanced economies over the past 40 years.This essay presents four facts about the rise of services in the U.S. and other advanced economies.1.
BACKGROUNDThe Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil.Administered by the U.S. Department of Energy, these federally-owned oil stocks are stored
T he American perspective has always included the notion that anyone can move to a location that promises better opportunities.Depending on the time period and age of an individual, opportunities related to various locations may differ.Existing literature has shown interesting discrepancies between homeownership, income, marriage, and fertility patterns across generations.Our previous essays have described how, at age 30, Baby Boomers owned homes at a higher proportion and had higher median incomes and less educational debt than Millennials.In this essay, we explore where different generational cohorts in the US have lived in different points of their lives.We use data from three main sources: (i) The American Community Survey, which the US Census Bureau has run annually since 2000; (ii) the Decennial Census, with data from 1940 to 2022 on income, employment status, geographic identifiers, and demographic information for a representative sample of the population; and (iii) the Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for Counties from the National Center for Health Statistics, which divides metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) into six categories.From these sources, we categorize individuals by their birth years as follows: Silent Generation (1928-1945),
I n a previous Economic Synopses essay, 1 we studied the concentration of commercial real estate (CRE) exposures in the US financial sector.More specifically, we showed that (i) banks tend to be the most exposed financial institutions and (ii) banks with larger exposures to CRE tend to be smaller, have lower liquidity ratios, and fewer loan loss provisions. 2
Immigrants make up significant proportions of the population and labor force in many developed economies, but they face considerable challenges in navigating those labor markets, such as occupational regulations and licensing, lack of destination-specific skills, or outright discrimination. In our recent working paper,1 we studied how labor market barriers affect immigrant workers collectively and by occupation groups across the US and other destination countries. In a recent blog post, we summarized cross-country empirical evidence from our paper of employment differences between immigrant and native workers across four occupation groups—non-routine cognitive, non-routine manual, routine cognitive, and routine manual.2 Nonroutine cognitive occupations include management and professional occupations; non-routine manual occupations include jobs like health aides and food workers; routine cognitive occupations include jobs like retail sales and The Allocation of Immigrant Talent Across Countries: Earnings Gaps
