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Dallas Fed Economics Archive

Analysis and insights to enhance your understanding of the economy
  • Jackie Balanovsky, Isabel Dhillon, Pia Orrenius and Guhan Venkatu

    The adequacy of the Texas educational system, which enrolls more than 5.5 million children in public kindergarten-through-12 schools, has been a recurring source of concern in the state.
  • Garrett Golding, Claire Jeffress and Xiaohan Zhang

    Better understanding of the workforce implications of rising electricity demand, particularly at the state and local levels, is critical to planning and anticipating its economic and policy impacts.
  • Xiaoqing Zhou

    In Depth: While hostilities between Iran and Israel ended quickly in June 2025 without a major oil supply disruption, it is worthwhile to explore the impact on inflation and inflation expectations if this geopolitical event had turned out differently.
  • Ali Ozdagli, Dylan Ryfe and Lillian Han

    Despite asset managers playing an increasingly pivotal role in investment decisions—leading to more similar portfolios—analysis of life insurance firms and their advisers reveals a relatively small threat to financial stability.
  • Xiaohan Zhang and Grace Ozor

    When the Fed lowers its benchmark policy rate, the reduction is usually reflected in a variety of consumer finance rates, notably mortgages. However, there are reasons to believe that such a reduction might not prompt an increase in the volume of mortgage refinances and prepayment activity as has historically occurred.
  • Michael D. Plante, Alexander W. Richter and Sarah Zubairy

    The U.S. faces a historically high federal debt-to-GDP ratio, a measure of debt relative to economic output. But how sensitive are interest rates to higher debt?
  • Hugo De Vere, Srini Ramaswamy and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl

    In Depth: The Fed has floating-rate liabilities as well as long-lived, zero-interest liabilities. A barbell of floating-rate and long-duration assets would best offset the interest rate risk from these liabilities. Investing in a more diversified mix of durations, while matching the average duration of assets, could be more practical than the barbell approach but would leave a substantial portion of interest rate risk unhedged.
  • Christine Docherty and Alessio Saretto

    Reciprocal deposit networks are designed to increase the total amount eligible for FDIC deposit insurance. In recent years, growth of the networks has accelerated, prompting a re-evaluation of the existing deposit insurance framework and raising at least three questions.
  • Mariam Yousuf and Robert Leigh

    Firms are adopting AI and automation to offset rising tariff costs and shrinking margins, aiming to boost productivity and reduce labor needs amid economic challenges.
  • Srini Ramaswamy, Hugo De Vere, Matthew McCormick and Seth Searls

    In Depth: The Treasury cash-futures basis trade, a very large, leveraged Treasury trade, has drawn scrutiny because unwinding positions amplified stress during the pandemic-era market shock of March 2020. Although the trade has since become more prominent, recent market activity suggest that financial stability concerns have not simultaneously grown.