Dallas Fed Economics Archive

• February 14, 2023
  Residential solar power shines on, backed by securitized lending

  SungJe Byun and Joseph Kneip

  Residential solar is a small and rapidly expanding sector, and the securitization market—the packaging of loans to investors—has been one of the most popular sources of funding for new solar installations.
• February 9, 2023
  Texas modestly grows with soft landing likely

  Ana Pranger and Emily Kerr

  Texas firms reported below-average output growth to start 2023, while employment and wage gains remained elevated despite indications of a softening labor market.
• February 7, 2023
  Job vacancy, unemployment relationship clouds ‘soft landing’ prospects

  Alexander W. Richter and Nathaniel Throckmorton

  Some economists have argued that because the job vacancy rate has been well above its prepandemic level, there is plenty of room for vacancies to fall before the unemployment rate must rise.
• January 19, 2023
  Tax, transfer programs explain why Western Europeans work less than Americans

  Lei Fang and Fang Yang

  Western Europe differs from the United States not only in consumption tax, income tax and social security systems but also in the total factor productivity—a measure of productivity—for market production in which most European countries are low.
• January 17, 2023
  Texas electrical grid remains vulnerable to extreme weather events

  Garrett Golding

  New regulations, weatherization standards and operational changes have addressed many shortcomings, but some critical gaps persist.
• January 10, 2023
  High inflation disproportionately hurts low-income households

  Aparna Jayashankar and Anthony Murphy

  Household survey results do not support Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman's recent suggestion that low-income families “have actually been hurt less by inflation than families with higher incomes.”
• January 3, 2023
  Decentralized finance proposed as alternative to traditional financial services

  Alessio Saretto

  DeFi applications allow users to directly interact with each other to borrow, lend, insure and exchange digital assets without centralized intermediaries, such as banks and custodial exchanges.
• December 27, 2022
  Existing low-rate mortgages blunt impact of recent rate surge

  Xiaoqing Zhou

  The prevalence of low-rate mortgages suggests that future policy rate cuts may not as effectively stimulate household spending through refinancing as during past recessions.
• December 23, 2022
  Expanded central clearing would increase Treasury market resilience

  Matthew McCormick and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl

  The smooth functioning of markets for Treasury securities is critically important to the U.S. economy. The federal government relies on the sale of Treasuries to finance essential services, and the Federal Reserve uses Treasury markets to implement monetary policy.
• December 22, 2022
  Economic outlook weakens as job growth, inflation slow

  Luis Torres, Aparna Jayashankar and Prithvi Kalkunte

  The Texas economy is continuing to slow during the fourth quarter, with labor demand and manufacturing output softening and wage and price pressures easing.