Why Did Credit Card Balances Decline so Much during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Consumer credit card balances in the United States experienced unprecedented declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the G.19 Consumer Credit statistical release, revolving consumer credit fell more than $120 billion (11 percent) in 2020, the largest decline in both nominal and percentage terms in the history of the series.

Bank Branches and COVID-19: Where are Banks Closing Branches during the Pandemic?

In the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, bank branches were closing at a steady rate. Additionally, households with a bank account increasingly adopted mobile or online banking for at least a portion of their banking needs. As COVID-19 dramatically changes the desire and willingness for consumers to have in-person interactions, it may accelerate both of these trends and lead to a permanent shift in how people access financial services.

Effects of Supply Chain Bottlenecks on Prices using Textual Analysis

After collapsing in the second half of 2020, global demand for goods, as reflected in global trade, has been exceptionally strong and now well exceeds pre-pandemic levels. The sharp bounceback reflects several factors, including an unprecedented amount of global stimulus and the drawdown of excess savings (especially for high-income households).

New Accounting Framework Faces Its First Test: CECL During the Pandemic

On January 1, 2020, most large and mid-sized U.S. banks adopted Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL), a new accounting standard for estimating allowances. Allowance for credit losses is an estimate of the amount that a bank is unlikely to recover from a financial asset.

Credit Portfolio Convergence in U.S. Banks since the COVID-19 Shock

The COVID-19 pandemic has materially affected U.S. consumer behavior and business operations in many important aspects. This note focuses on the changes in banks’ balance sheets and demonstrates how we could apply a novel measure of portfolio similarity to balance sheet data and assess the drivers of similarity change along the path of the pandemic.

The Ability to Work Remotely: Measures and Implications

At the onset of the COVID-19 recession, a large share of the employed switched to remote work. Individual- and firm-level surveys indicated that the switch affected between 35 and 45 percent of workers.

Quantifying Bottlenecks in Manufacturing

Shortages of key components and logistics problems have constrained factory output since the start of the year. Numerous anecdotes and survey measures have highlighted the emergence of supply chain bottlenecks and other supply constraints; to complement those qualitative characterizations, this note proposes a novel methodology to quantify bottlenecks in the manufacturing sector.

Differences in Rent Growth by Income 1985-2019 and Implications for Real Income Inequality

Large and growing income differentials in the US have generated a mounting interest in income inequality among economists. The average income in the highest quintile of households increased by about 70 percent in real terms from 1985 to 2019, whereas the average income of the lowest quintile only increased by 20 percent during this period (Semega et al. 2020).

Caregiving for children and parental labor force participation during the pandemic

The labor force participation rate (LFPR)—the fraction of the population ages 16 and older that is either working or actively looking for work—moved up steadily over the last few years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and stood at 63.3 percent in February 2020. Two months later, the LFPR had plunged to 60.2 percent, and despite some improvement since then, the LFPR has remained depressed relative to its pre-COVID level (fluctuating between 61.4 percent and 61.7 percent since Fall 2020).

International Measures of Common Inflation

A key challenge for monetary policymakers in achieving their inflation goals—particularly important at the current juncture—is to be able to distinguish between persistent inflationary changes and short-term idiosyncratic shocks. The most common approach for filtering out short-term price shocks from inflation is to focus on measures of "core" inflation, traditionally defined as the change in the consumer price index (CPI) excluding food and energy prices.