Economic Research - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

Economic Research

Portrait of Kartik Athreya
Kartik Athreya on His First Year as Research Director of the New York Fed

Catch up with Kartik Athreya as he answers questions about his experiences in his first year as director of research at the New York Fed. Kartik discusses some of the unique aspects of being a New York Fed economist, ways that researchers have responded to the pandemic, and the topics that have most resonated with him over the past year.  

Global Trends in U.S. Inflation Dynamics
A key feature of the post-pandemic inflation surge was the strong correlation among inflation rates across sectors, both in U.S. and other advanced economies. The authors explore the common features of inflation patterns using an extension of the Multivariate Core Inflation Trend (MCT) model. They find that the slow-moving trends seen in U.S. inflation dynamics are not U.S.-specific but are shared by other countries as well—both over a pre-pandemic and post-pandemic sample.
By Ozge Akinci, Martin Almuzara, Silvia Miranda-Agrippino, Ramya Nallamotu, Argia Sbordone, Greg Simitian, and William Zeng
Supply and Demand Drivers of Global Inflation
The authors explore the sources of global inflation trends, which they believe can be traced to factors that may result from correlated or global shocks. They find that most of the movement in inflation trends since the pandemic’s onset were due to adverse supply shocks, and that if central banks had fully committed to offset demand shocks, they would have achieved a modest reduction in global inflation at the cost of a very large contraction in global growth.
By Ozge Akinci, Martin Almuzara, Silvia Miranda-Agrippino, Ramya Nallamotu, Argia Sbordone, Greg Simitian, and William Zeng
U.S. Imports from China Have Fallen by Less Than U.S. Data Indicate
With new tariffs on China back in the headlines, the author explores how much China’s exports have really been affected by multiple rounds of U.S. tariffs and export restrictions over the past seven years. He finds that U.S. imports from China have decreased by much less than has been reported in official U.S. statistics, and that the recent tariff increase on China could have a larger impact on the U.S. economy than is suggested by official U.S. data.
By Hunter Clark
Decorative Image: A young family standing in front of the new home they purchased with the for sale/ sold sign next to them.
Are First-Time Home Buyers Facing Desperate Times?
Some recent proposals and policy dialogue describe first-time home buyers (FTBs) as facing desperate times, but what is the evidence that FTBs are having unprecedented challenges? Using data from the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), the authors point out that based on some metrics, the crisis appears to be unfounded and that FTBs are proving to be more resilient than some depict.
By Donghoon Lee and Joseph Tracy
Discount Window Stigma After the Global Financial Crisis
The rapid deposit outflows during the March 2023 banking run highlights the importance of the Federal Reserve’s discount window in strengthening financial stability. A lack of borrowing, however, has plagued the discount window for decades, likely due to banks’ concerns about discount window stigma. The discount window has been reformed several times to alleviate this problem, but it’s unknown whether stigma remains. The authors use transaction-level data to examine whether the discount window remains stigmatized today.
By Olivier Armantier, Marco Cipriani, and Asani Sarkar
RESEARCH TOPICS
Bank Economic Capital
Assessments of bank solvency are central to the monitoring and regulation of banks. However, conventional measures of bank solvency fail to account for the unique liquidity risks posed by deposits. The authors use public regulatory data to develop a novel measure, economic capital, that jointly quantifies the impact of credit, liquidity, and market risk on bank solvency. They find that bank economic capital is a more timely and accurate indicator of bank health than standard solvency measures.
Beverly Hirtle and Matthew C. Plosser, Staff Report 1144, March 2025
Credit Card Banking
Credit card interest rates in the United States currently average 23 percent, far exceeding any other major type of loan or bond. Why are these rates so high? To find out, the authors analyze credit card lending as an asset class and compare its pricing to other types of lending. They also investigate all the streams of revenues and costs involved in this business, and whether market power plays an important role in them.
Itamar Drechsler, Hyeyoon Jung, Weiyu Peng, Dominik Supera, and Guanyu Zhou, Staff Report 1143, March 2025
The Prudential Toolkit with Shadow Banking
Financial crises involve high social costs, so banks are heavily regulated. Some regulations introduce state-contingency into the returns of short-term creditors while others do not. A major impediment to designing effective regulation is the information gap between banks and regulators, and banks may use shadow technologies to circumvent regulation. The authors study the optimal mix of state-contingent and non-contingent regulation, finding that state-contingent regulation is more likely to be constrained by the threat of shadow banking.
Kinda Hachem and Martin Kuncl, Staff Report 1142, March 2025
All-to-All Trading in the U.S. Treasury Market
Despite the U.S. Treasury market being the deepest and most liquid securities market globally, it has faced several incidents of market disruption in recent years, raising concerns about its resilience. Some market observers have proposed all-to-all trading as a way to ease dealers’ intermediation constraints and promote Treasury market resilience. The authors explore the concept of all-to-all trading in the secondary cash Treasury market and evaluate the benefits and challenges around its adoption.
Alain Chaboud, Ellen Correia Golay, Caren Cox, Michael Fleming, Yesol Huh, Frank Keane, Kyle Lee, Krista Schwarz, Clara Vega, and Carolyn Windover, Economic Policy Review 31, no. 2
Input Sourcing Under Supply Chain Risk: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing Firms
The past few decades have seen a dramatic transformation in the international organization of production. For many firms, the timely delivery of inputs is a crucial element of the production process. However, increased reliance on imported inputs has exposed firms to a host of supply chain risks that can adversely affect the timeliness of input deliveries. The authors focus on one major source of risk—weather shocks—and how this supply chain vulnerability influences firms’ import behavior.
Joaquin Blaum, Federico Esposito, and Sebastian Heise, Staff Report 1141, February 2025
When It Rains, It Pours: Cyber Vulnerability and Financial Conditions
How does systemic cyber risk interact with other financial vulnerabilities? To study how cyber vulnerability evolves over the financial cycle, the authors analyze the market turmoil at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. They find that the systemic consequences of cyberattacks are heightened when markets are more volatile and when financial intermediaries’ balance sheets are strained. Furthermore, official-sector interventions to stabilize financial markets likely have a mitigating, if unintended, effect on cyber vulnerability.
Thomas M. Eisenbach, Anna Kovner, and Michael Junho Lee, Economic Policy Review 31, no. 1
Repo Intermediation and Central Clearing: An Analysis of Sponsored Repo
Through the past decade, the Treasury market has experienced several episodes when market functioning has been severely disrupted. These disruptions highlighted the important role of intermediaries and raised questions on identifying the drivers of spreads charged by these firms. Although significant work has been done considering these issues for some Treasury securities markets, little has been done on sponsored repo, where dealer-to-customer trades are centrally cleared. The authors evaluate the forces behind a dealer-intermediary’s decision to move a bilateral repo transaction with a customer into central clearing.
Adam Copeland and R. Jay Kahn, Staff Report 1140, December 2024
Corporate Debt Structure over the Global Credit Cycle
The authors study the determinants of prepayment at the instrument level for a large cross-section of firms around the world, how such prepayment affects firm-level debt structure, and how global credit conditions affect the ability and willingness of firms to refinance their debt early. Their results show that the impact of global credit conditions on firms' debt structure can be traced back to how instrument-level prepayment incentives change over the global credit cycle.
Nina Boyarchenko and Leonardo Elias, Staff Report 1139, December 2024
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