The Power of Proximity: How Working beside Colleagues Affects Training and Productivity
Firms remain divided about the value of the office for “office” workers. Some firms think that their employees are more productive when working from home. Others believe that the office is a key place for investing in workers’ skills. In this post, which is based on a...
Towards Increasing Complexity: The Evolution of the FX Market
The foreign exchange market has evolved extensively over time, undergoing important shifts in the types of market participants and the mix of instruments traded, within a trading ecosystem that has become increasingly complex. In this post, we discuss...
An Overlooked Factor in Banks’ Lending to Minorities
In the second quarter of 2022, the homeownership rate for white households was 75 percent, compared to 45 percent for Black households and 48 percent for Hispanic households. One reason for these differences, virtually unchanged in the last few decades, is uneven...
Global food commodity prices decline in December led by sharp drop in sugar quotations
World food commodity prices end in 2023 about 10% below their year-earlier level, with the most notable decrease observed in international sugar quotations. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Food Price Index, the average...
Measuring Price Inflation and Growth in Economic Well‑Being with Income‑Dependent Preferences
How can we accurately measure changes in living standards over time in the presence of price inflation? In this post, I discuss a novel and simple methodology that uses the cross-sectional relationship between income and household-level inflation to construct accurate...
CIO calls a new phase in the market, says a ‘healthy’ rotation has begun
The so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks — Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — now represent around 30% of the entire market cap of the S&P 500 index. Bank CIO Charles-Henry Monchau said the market will undergo a welcome “broadening of the...
Global Food Prices Post Biggest Annual Drop Since 2015
Steep drop in raw prices could indicate relief for consumers Fall in wholesale prices take time to feed through to retail Global food prices posted the biggest annual drop since 2015, amid signs that lower wholesale food prices are starting to feed through to...
Where Is R‑Star and the End of the Refi Boom: The Top 5 Posts of 2023
The topics covered on Liberty Street Economics in 2023 hit many themes, reflecting the range of research interests of the more than sixty staff economists at the New York Fed and their coauthors. We published 122 posts this year, exploring important subjects such as...
America’s Sugar Shortfall Leaves Candy-Makers Scrounging
A run-up in costs for a key ingredient squeezes the $48.8 billion confectionery sector just in time for the holidays. Bonbons and candy canes may dominate the American holiday aesthetic, but US confectionery companies are feeling anything but jolly as they head into...
Why We Invested — Rypplzz
Digital meets physical through patented spatial computing In the continually evolving realm of the Internet of Things (IoT), where the boundaries between the digital and physical dimensions merge to reshape our interactions with the world, there is a significant...
Private Equity Sees an Oligopoly Ripe for Disruption
The arcane business of pension buyouts generates good returns for the insurance sector — but are they too good to last? When private equity firms push into an industry, you know there are decent returns to be made. Just consider their enthusiasm for the arcane...
Essential AI Comes Out of Stealth With $57 Million in Funding
The startup was founded by two co-authors of a famous Google AI paper Essential AI, an artificial intelligence startup founded by two authors of a seminal research paper at Google is disclosing details for the first time Tuesday, saying it has raised $56.5 million in...
AI sentiment toward Google seen improving rapidly after Gemini launch; Shares gain
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stock is up more than 3% in early New York trading on Thursday following the release of Gemini, described as Google's "largest and most capable AI model" to date. Analysts have responded positively to this long-anticipated AI model,...
Birkenstock Finally Tops IPO Price While Other Entrants Struggle
Firms with recent listings seeing smaller gains than peers ‘Everything rally’ propels S&P 500 to jump 11% as VIX sinks A rally across equity markets lifted Birkenstock Holding Plc and other newly public firms, but Wall Street still isn’t welcoming initial public...