Long-term U.S. interest rates have fallen substantially over the last two decades. The 5-to-10-year nominal forward interest rate implied by the prices of U.S. Treasury securities is now about 7 percentage points lower than it was at the start of the 1990s

We present an estimate of the total amount of funds primary dealers can access from the intermediation of cash and securities through secured funding transactions (SFTs). We highlight how this activity can introduce an additional source of risk: the abrupt withdrawal of cash borrowers, which we...

The cyclical state of the economy and the natural rate of unemployment are key unobserved variables in policymakers' analysis of economic developments. The price Phillips curve relates the measures of resource utilization—often through deviations of the unemployment rate from the natural rate...

The FOMC has stated that it intends to continue implementing monetary policy in a regime with an ample supply of reserves. This Note, the first in a three-part series, provides an introductory discussion of what it means to implement policy in such a regime and how the Fed ensures interest rate...

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, leveraged loans have deteriorated and concerns about CLOs, the main buyers of loans on the secondary market, have increased. These concerns have reduced the demand for new CLOs, making it harder for firms to borrow through leveraged loans on the...

The "natural" or equilibrium real rate of interest is an important concept in macroeconomics. On the one hand, the natural (real) rate provides a description of the real interest rate path consistent with the eventual full capacity of utilization of available resources in the context of low and...

This note documents differences and similarities between rural and urban retail banking clients using data from the Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Understanding geographic differences in local demand conditions for banking is important for designing effective public policy

Business dynamism is a micro-foundation for economic growth. Productivity gains come from a reallocation of resources from less efficient to more efficient firms, often through entry of new firms and exit of existing firms

As income and wealth inequality have grown in the United States in recent decades, the large and growing differences in household expenditures on children from advantaged versus disadvantaged backgrounds have increasingly become a matter of public concern. High socioeconomic status (SES)...

In the historic Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016, U.K. citizens voted in favor of leaving the European Union (EU), a result that created substantial uncertainty regarding the future economic relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU. As can be seen in Figure 1, uncertainty, measured...