Many women face the balancing act of managing a successful professional life with the societal expectations that come with being a mother. What impact might this have on a woman's career?

Nobel Prize winners Doug Diamond and Philip Dybvig developed a model that sheds light on this question.

The Fed's monetary tightening over the past year has had an immediate effect on the housing market. But if the Fed didn't act to bring inflation down, we could expect lenders to charge high rates simply to break even in real terms.

While the Fed has never been a stranger to criticism, the criticism has been notable and specific during the past year. The subject: inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stressed that monetary policy is a blunt instrument and using it to bring down inflation could entail some short-term pain. This risk, though, must be compared with outcomes that would confront the Fed and the economy were clear action not forthcoming.

When COVID-19 hit, it put consumers and businesses in unprecedented difficulty. Given the magnitude of the unique shock hitting the economy, the Fed acted to ensure that broader financial conditions did not further hurt consumers and businesses.

Unlike in other recessions, women's labor force participation was impacted more than men's. What impact did child care have?

An analysis of the roles of central bank lending and central bank credit policy, what can go wrong with central bank lending, and how to fix these problems.

As a regional Fed, it is in our mission to help wherever we can to promote economic vitality in our District. So, starting in early 2018, the Richmond Fed stepped up its efforts to learn about rural and small-town economies and to seek ways in which outcomes could be improved and potential unleashed.

Some observers have recently voiced concern that Fed activities in the areas of climate change and inequality may put the institution at risk.

As we look ahead at an economy that is likely to show strong aggregate performance, it will be important to keep in mind that such headline numbers — including, importantly, headline indicators of consumer credit performance — will almost surely hide the struggles of a not-small group of households.

During most of the COVID-19 pandemic, regions with high financial distress saw disproportionately more infections and deaths than regions with low financial distress. As of February 2021, cumulative infections appear more evenly distributed while total deaths remain higher in financially distressed regions.

Recently, the Dodd-Frank Act has arguably played an important role during the coronavirus crisis. It's a good time to take another look.

Part 4: Financial Distress and the Second Wave of COVID-19 Infections

Part 3: How Will COVID-19 Affect the Spending of the Financially Distressed?

Part 2: The Spread of COVID-19 and (Financial) Pre-Existing Conditions

Part 1: Employment Vulnerability and (Financial) Pre-Existing Conditions

A quantitative model of college enrollment suggests that the value of college access varies greatly across individuals.

Household financial distress is pervasive. Is this pattern driven by a small share of individuals experiencing persistent distress, by the majority facing more occasional distress, or something in between? Recent research indicates that over a lifetime, financial distress is unlikely for most but very persistent for some.

According to conventional wisdom, wealth redistribution boosts output by increasing aggregate consumption. However, while redistributive policies can have a short-run stimulative effect on consumption, their effect on output depends, potentially quite importantly, on the nature of household labor supply.

The Importance of Researcher Independence

Minorities are less likely to climb the economic ladder than whites. Access to high-quality early childhood education plays an important role.

Existing policies to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) largely have been structured to subsidize alternative energy technologies. Yet these policies are likely not to be as useful as ones that target CO2 emissions directly, such as an emissions tax or a "cap and trade" program.

It is widely believed that public sector spending and investment can restore aggregate economic activity to efficient levels. But some policy responses are likely to be more successful than others.

We study the implications of incarceration for the earnings and employment of different groups, characterized by their race, gender, and education.

The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability.

Through an empirically-disciplined human capital model, we demonstrate that the value of college varies dramatically across US high school completers.

This paper shows that dispersion in the likelihood of college noncompletion, and to a lesser extent risks to earnings over the life cycle, may strongly limit the response of aggregate human capital investment to further increases in the U.S. college earnings premium.

In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of loan guarantees, in the context of unsecured consumption loans.