Research Department Working Papers
Tempting FAIT: Flexible Average Inflation Targeting and the Post-COVID U.S. Inflation Surge
In August 2020, the Federal Reserve replaced Flexible Inflation Targeting (FIT) with Flexible Average Inflation Targeting (FAIT), introducing make-up strategies that allow inflation to temporarily exceed the 2% target. Using a synthetic control approach, this paper estimates that FAIT raised CPI inflation by about 1 percentage point and core CPI inflation by 0.5 percentage points, suggesting a moderate impact net of food and energy and a largely temporary effect. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a steeper-than-expected post-pandemic Phillips curve in the New Keynesian model.
April 09, 2025
Globalization Institute Working Paper
Living Up to Expectations: The Effectiveness of Forward Guidance and Inflation Dynamics Post-Global Financial Crisis
This paper studies the effectiveness of forward guidance when central banks face private agents with heterogeneous expectations allowing for a degree of bounded rationality.
April 03, 2025
Weighing Texas economic resilience amid tariffs, workforce challenges
Ray Perryman, principal of Waco-based The Perryman Group, has been an observer of the Texas economy for more than four decades. He offers his views of what has propelled Texas since the 1980s oil bust and the state’s future prospects, and he recounts how he grew his economics firm.
March 07, 2025
Research Department Working Papers
Trade Costs and Inflation Dynamics
This paper exploits bilateral trade flows of final and intermediate goods together with the structure of static trade models that deliver gravity equations to identify exogenous changes in trade costs between countries. The authors then use a local projections approach to assess the effects of trade cost shocks on consumer price (CPI) inflation.
March 04, 2025
Mexico, U.S. and China offer an evolving ‘triangular’ trade relationship
Enrique Dussel Peters, a professor at the Graduate School of Economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México and coordinator of the university’s Center for Chinese–Mexican Studies, discusses trade flows between the U.S., Mexico and China and their prospects.
March 03, 2025
Speech by President Lorie K. Logan
Efficient and effective central bank balance sheets
At a Bank of England conference on central bank balance sheets, President Lorie Logan laid out two key principles: efficient and effective. It’s heartening that central banks around the world have converged on some approaches to uphold these twin principles.
February 25, 2025
Geopolitical oil price risk not a major driver of global macroeconomic fluctuations
Notwithstanding the attention geopolitical events in oil markets have attracted, we find that geopolitical oil price risk is unlikely to generate sizable recessionary effects.
February 18, 2025
Speech by President Lorie K. Logan
Opening remarks for panel on ‘Future challenges for monetary policy in the Americas’
At the Bank for International Settlements’ Chapultepec Conference, Dallas Fed President Lorie K. Logan discussed future challenges for monetary policy in the Americas and the role of the neutral interest rate.
February 06, 2025
Research Department Working Papers
The Impact of the 2022 Oil Embargo and Price Cap on Russian Oil Prices
This paper documents the effect of the oil embargo and price cap on Russian oil exports in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
January 31, 2025
Research Department Working Papers
An Anatomy of U.S. Establishments’ Trade Linkages in Global Value Chains
Global value chains (GVC) are a pervasive feature of modern production, but they are hard to measure. Using U.S. Census microdata, this paper develops novel measures of the linkages between U.S. manufacturing establishments’ imports and exports. The paper documents three new GVC patterns.
December 27, 2024