Search Results
Briefing
Responding to Urban Decline
In recent decades, a number of once-prominent U.S. cities have experienced economic hardship and significant population loss. Policymakers in those cities want to jump-start growth and improve prospects for the people who live there. But where should they begin? This Economic Brief surveys economic studies on a variety of urban policy interventions and provides lessons for policymakers.
Briefing
Why Does the Fed Study Regional Economics?
All of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks study the economies of their regions, but how is this information used? Regional data historically haven't swayed monetary policy decisions, but they provide policymakers and researchers with timely information about economic conditions and with context for interpreting data obtained from other sources.
Working Paper
Distance and Decline: The Case of Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg, Virginia, prospered over two centuries as a center of production and trade. However, the city experienced economic difficulties beginning in the 1980s as a large number of layoffs at production plants in the area coincided with an erosion of retail trade in the city. Prolonged economic decline followed. In contrast, somewhat similar shocks in other moderate-sized cities in Virginia were followed by gradual economic recovery. We examine these differing outcomes and offer an explanation that hinges on the proximity of Petersburg to its larger neighbor, the greater Richmond area. We ...
Journal Article
Import Tariffs and Illegal Immigration: A Strategic Analysis
We examine the effects of tariffs in a two-country specific-factors model with endogenous illegal immigration. While tariffs generate the usual terms-of-trade gains in goods markets for the host country, they also raise wages and attract additional illegal immigration. Increased immigration-related costs and higher wage costs of hiring immigrants may reduce the welfare of citizens of the host country. We also show that within the context of our two-nation framework, free trade need not maximize joint welfare when illegal immigration and certain immigration-related costs are present. Finally, ...
Working Paper
Unauthorized Immigration and Fiscal Competition
Reflecting upon recent enforcement policy activism of US states and countries within the EU towards unauthorized workers, we examine the overlap of centralized (federal) and decentralized (state or regional) enforcement of immigration policies in a spatial context. Among other results, we find that if interstate mobility is costless, internal enforcement is overprovided, and border enforcement and local goods are underprovided when regions take more responsibility in deciding policies. This leads to higher levels of unauthorized immigration under decentralization. Interregional migration ...
Journal Article
The Rise and Decline of Petersburg, Va.
Early Virginians looked at Petersburg, with its location on the Appomattox River, as a town of economic vibrancy and promise. Incorporated in 1748 by the Virginia General Assembly, the town fulfilled that early promise and grew to become the commonwealth's third independent city in 1850. But turmoil as well as prosperity for Petersburg were ahead. {{p}} Throughout its 270 years, three factors have dominated Petersburg's economic history: tobacco, trade, and transportation. The city's early economic prominence was due to its tobacco plantations and warehouses as well as various mills powered ...
Briefing
The Pandemic’s Effects on Children’s Education
School closures and switches to hybrid/virtual learning due to the pandemic adversely affected student achievement through several channels, including a decline in skill accumulation and a disruption of peer effects and peer-group formation.Preliminary evidence suggests that losses took place early in the pandemic and that there has not been an apparent recovery. Also, the impact on students has been far from uniform, as economic losses tend to fall more deeply on younger students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.Simply returning schools and instructional practices to where they ...
Briefing
Why Use a Diffusion Index?
Diffusion indexes are a useful way to summarize economic information from surveys because they are easy to understand and correlate well with economic activity over time. To use diffusion indexes most effectively as a measure of change, however, it is important that the extensive margin of the indicator in question explains more of the change in that indicator than the intensive margin. This article, and the papers described in it, can also be used to develop a confidence interval around any diffusion index.
Working Paper
Urban Transportation and Inter-Jurisdictional Competition
It is well-known that competition for factors of production, including competition for residents, affects the public services provided in the communities. This paper considers the determination of local investment in urban transport systems. Many specialists question the effectiveness of the current U.S. top-to-bottom transportation institutional arrangement in which the federal government plays a dominant role and recommend a shift toward a decentralized organization. We examine how such a shift would affect the levels of transport investment. Specifically, we consider a model of two cities, ...