Since becoming President of the Richmond Fed in 2018, Tom Barkin has made spending time throughout the Fifth District his goal. One of the ways the Richmond Fed's research department supports this goal is through an event series known as Community Conversations.
Economic Growth

We look at the factors that contribute to a sustained rise over time in an economy's production of goods and services.
Leveraging some of its natural advantages, Virginia has encouraged the industry's growth through tax incentives and other initiatives. It is now home to hundreds of data centers, many in Northern Virginia's "Data Center Alley."
MIT's Daron Acemoglu, the author of Why Nations Fail and Power and Progress, on Henry Ford, making AI worker-friendly, and how democracy improves economic growth.
Even though economists have made huge leaps in understanding how monetary policy impacts the economy, there remains substantial disagreement and imprecision in the estimates.
Hugo Hopenhayn discusses his research on the factors that affect the entry and exit of firms in a market, as well as the reallocation of labor and other resources that results from this "creative destruction." Hopenhayn is a professor of economics at UCLA and a long-term consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
New Jersey voters approved legalized gambling for Atlantic City in a 1976 referendum. The state explicitly leveraged the city's regional monopoly on casinos east of the Mississippi River as an economic development strategy to revive the blighted seaside resort town.
Changes in unemployment appear to be strong recession predictors, especially when combined with lagged term spreads.
We analyze the relationship between climate-related disasters and sovereign debt crises using a model with capital accumulation, sovereign default, and disaster risk.
Fifth District firms have experienced faster price growth since 2021. Increased uncertainty coincided with firms adjusting their own prices more frequently than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just by allowing the securities in its portfolio to mature, the Fed could reach a normalized size of its balance sheet in two to three years.
The startup rate has been declining for decades, but another measure of business growth has spiked since the pandemic started.
Chen Yeh discusses the factors that have contributed to an increase in new business formation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic implications of this entrepreneurship surge. Yeh is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Among the topics discussed were income growth volatility, AI's impact on productivity and how housing price changes affect young businesses.
Seemingly small international trade linkages can lead to substantial spillovers across countries, helping explain global comovement in GDP growth and inflation across countries.
Jason Kosakow and Santiago Pinto describe how survey data is gathered and used to assess regional and national economic conditions. Kosakow is survey director and Pinto is a senior economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
The relationship between the producer price index and consumer price indexes has not always been clear.
During bubbles, an innovation raises a company's stock price by more than it would otherwise, and competing company stock prices don't suffer as much.
Valentin Haddad, Paul Ho and Erik Loualiche
As legal gambling options proliferate, commercial casino expansion is less likely to induce economic growth.
How does immigration policy impact economic growth? Do firms that hire more skilled immigrants perform better? These and other questions were addressed during a recent Richmond Fed conference.
Abhimanyu Banerjee
Sonya Ravindranath Waddell shares insights from the latest survey of chief financial officers and other financial decision-makers at companies across the United States. Waddell is a vice president and economist at the Richmond Fed.
As the Fed works to contain inflation, many ask whether we are headed into a recession. President Barkin shares his perspective.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
For decades, economists have been looking for leading indicators that can signal the future direction of the overall economy. In today's post, we look at a few of these indicators and what they suggest for growth going forward.
When immigration is restricted in rural areas, native workers don't seem to fill the jobs left empty.
The recent fall in real GDP has sparked considerable concern, but an alternative measure of provides hope that the economy didn't fare as poorly as the GDP data suggest.
In this essay, we describe Marvin Goodfriend's Industrial Development model and ponder its lessons for contemporary policy discussions.
The recent high inflation had been due to price changes in a small group of expenditures, but that changed a few months ago.
Yale University economist on developing countries, measuring economies by satellite, and the learning crisis.
Studies suggest that short-term effects of such spending are small and long-term effects depend on an economy's sensitivity to such investment.
News about productivity shocks — even when these shocks have not even happened yet — seems to be a powerful additional source of economic fluctuations.
Thomas A. Lubik, Christoph Gortz and Christopher Gunn
President Tom Barkin reflects on lessons learned last year and looks forward at what this year could look like for the U.S. economy.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Firms with high productivity place more establishments in dense locations and fewer establishments in low density locations.
The annualized PCE inflation rate over the period March through July is 6.5 percent, the highest five-month rate since November 1981.
Household consumption shocks have accounted for close to 40 percent of pre-pandemic business cycle fluctuations.
The Power of Creative Destruction ties the need for social insurance to the crucial roles played by social norms and civil society.
Surveyed Fifth District firms are raising wages at an above normal pace as they struggle to fill open positions.
Roisin McCord
Contrary to the traditional view, adverse events for a single firm can affect the economy as a whole, if the firm is large enough.
The new language — which has been in each FOMC statement since September — represents a significant shift in the committee's thinking.
Targeted interventions toward COVID-19, rather than universal stay-at-home orders, might have resulted in less economic damage and fewer deaths, according to one researcher.
The economic recovery enabled by the vaccine rollout has increased demand for Fifth District goods and services. But can supply keep up with demand?
Jacob Crouse and Sonya Ravindranath Waddell
Sonya Waddell, Brent Meyer and John Graham discuss the latest results of the quarterly CFO Survey.
A new theory of economic development integrates two existing paradigms to show that reducing distortions in "big push" regions could unleash massive growth.
Reiko Laski and Nicholas Trachter
Many countries have industrialized and grown rapidly by adopting modern technologies. Why don't poor countries adopt more productive technologies? Is there a role for policies that coordinate technology adoption?
Francisco Buera, Hugo Hopenhayn, Yongseok Shin and Nicholas Trachter
This brief discusses the main contributions that college-educated immigrants make to U.S. productivity growth, such as providing scarce skills that supplement and complement skills of native workers, contributing disproportionately to innovation and promoting job creation in the United States by foreign-based multinational corporations.
Marios Karabarbounis, Nicholas Trachter, and Adam Blandin discuss using high-frequency datasets to track the economy's health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this paper we embark on an empirical search for hysteresis. While the theoretical channels for the transmission of hysteresis shocks are well-understood, empirical evidence is few and far between.
Luca Benati and Thomas A. Lubik
By quantifying climate change's effects and assessing potential mitigation and adaptation techniques, economists contribute valuable perspectives to conversations about the planet's future. This brief summarizes presentations from the Richmond Fed's November 2020 conference on climate change economics.
Molly Harnish
Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin discussed the latest CFO Survey results and their implications for the economy at a webinar hosted by the Economic Club of New York.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin spoke about the outlook for inflation at a webinar hosted by the Money Marketeers of New York University.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
President Tom Barkin wrote about economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin discusses economic conditions and the potential for a recession.
Tom Barkin
President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond