Nicolas Morales discusses his research on supply chains and the factors that can help them resist and recover from economic shocks, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Morales is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

How much should imitators compensate innovators for using their ideas?

Restrictions on immigration could cause production to shift away from the U.S. to other countries.

Andy Bauer, Renee Haltom and Matt Martin share what their business contacts have told them about regional economic conditions in the Fifth District.

U.S. politics have become increasingly polarized, and this polarization has impacted the economy.

Richmond Fed Research Director Kartik Athreya shares takeaways from the annual Technology-Enabled Disruption Conference, co-hosted by the Richmond, Atlanta and Dallas Feds.

Firm productivity plays a role in how many customers a firm loses after a price increase.

While auto sales have been trending up over the past several months, we'll look into a couple of reasons why the future may not be so bright.

Since the second half of 2022, we have observed firms increasingly pulling back on capital expenditures. This post explores the recent declines in capital investment using data from The CFO Survey and the Richmond Fed monthly business surveys.

Jason Kosakow and Sonya Waddell discuss the expectations of regional and national business leaders about the economy, based on responses to the CFO Survey and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's regional business surveys during the first quarter of 2023.

In this paper, we use new data on daily firm-to-firm transactions from India, coupled with a large exogenous shock that disrupted supply chains to varying degrees.

The lockdowns resulting from COVID-19 provide an opportunity to examine what factors affect the strength of supply chains.

President Barkin reflects on the relationship between technological innovation, the economy and monetary policy.

Malls have been a part of the American cultural and economic fabric for generations. How will they survive recessions, the rise of online shopping, and a pandemic?

Today's inflationary snarls reflect both supply shocks and policy stimulus.

Supply chain disruptions and fluctuating input costs are improving for some Fifth District firms, but the threat of a recession looms large according to August's surveys of businesses.

How competitive is the U.S. labor market? Answering this question quantitatively is helpful for understanding how wages are affected by labor market power, and thus for understanding how workers will be affected by labor policy choices.

Fifth District firms recently reported being able to better meet customer demand. A cooling economy may be part of the story.

In the OTC market for credit default swaps, some investors are more central within the trading network than others.

President Tom Barkin discusses how firms can optimize the hybrid work environment.

In this essay, we describe Marvin Goodfriend's Industrial Development model and ponder its lessons for contemporary policy discussions.

Purchases of durable goods have been moderating after experiencing a surge during the pandemic. But is this due to falling demand or constrained supplies?

Consumers who would benefit from lower tariffs on a good tend to matter more when setting trade policy than producers who want higher tariffs.

Fifth District firms report that two years into the pandemic, they still cannot provide enough goods and services to completely meet customer demand.

The New York Fed recently combined a variety of indicators into a single measure of global supply chain pressure. Plotting this index against the Richmond Fed's "prices paid" measurements from its business activity surveys can provide a window into the effects of supply disruptions on the Fifth Federal Reserve District.

The emergence of a new COVID-19 variant poses risks to next year's economic outlook, especially if a spike in cases leads to supply disruptions in China and higher prices for Chinese imports.

Doing a deep dive into inventory-to-sales ratios can yield insights into supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amid labor shortages and supply side disruptions, firms are struggling to fully meet demand and many reported they expect this issue to persist.

Recent data from the Institute for Supply Management and other sources offer early indications of whether and how much supply chain disruptions have eased.

Manufacturers have recently seen an increase in orders, but disruptions in the supply chain have made meeting demand a challenge.

The construction of the Interstate Highway System helped to develop the U.S. economy.

Sometimes money gets used when it should not, and we investigate why using surveys plus measures.

This post looks at the current assessment of roads and bridges in the Fifth District and how states have recently allocated federal funds.

Flu incidence declined dramatically during the pandemic. If that were to continue, we could see large social and economic gains, writes President Tom Barkin in his latest essay.

How much reshuffling of businesses and residents will we see among cities, suburbs, and rural areas? The answer will have important implications for local economies.

The economic recovery enabled by the vaccine rollout has increased demand for Fifth District goods and services. But can supply keep up with demand?

Sonya Waddell, Brent Meyer and John Graham discuss the latest results of the quarterly CFO Survey.

President Tom Barkin discusses the importance of training the next generation of infrastructure workers.

President Tom Barkin talks about the pandemic’s lasting influence on office life.

Tom Barkin travelled to Hickory, N.C. to take part in a video roundtable with industry leaders. These included five area furniture manufacturing companies, textile suppliers and more.

In just 10 years, between 1999 and 2009, North Carolina's furniture manufacturing industry lost more than half of its jobs.

Changes in the meat supply chain have brought benefits, but are vulnerabilities a cause for concern?

Decisions about investment at the firm level are important to the path of economic growth

Matt Martin provides his take on the tumultuous year that was 2020 and how it impacted economic conditions in North Carolina and South Carolina.

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.

We study innovation and diffusion of technology at the industry level. We derive an industry's evolution, from birth to its maturity, and we characterize how diffusion affects the incentive to innovate.

Episodes of booming innovation coincide with intense speculation in financial markets leading to bubbles — increases in market valuations and firm creation followed by a crash.

While most businesses surveyed have suffered some negative effects and loss of revenue as result of COVID-19, most remained open and operating, at least partially.

In this paper, we aim to provide insights into two main questions: First, which firms set up plants in which locations? Second, what determine the scale and location of production? Answering these questions requires us to think about plants and firms as distinct, albeit related, economic entities.

This paper identifies total factor productivity (TFP) news shocks using standard VAR methodology and documents a new stylized fact: in response to news about future increases in TFP, inventories rise and comove positively with other major macroeconomic aggregates.

President Tom Barkin wrote about the potential longer-term impact of COVID-19.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke May 16, 2019 at the Richmond Fed’s “Market Structure and the Macroeconomy” conference.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke May 15, 2019, to the New York Association for Business Economics.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke at the Virginia Association of Economists Annual Meeting on April 4, 2019, in Richmond.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke January 10, 2019, in Raleigh to the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce at its 2019 Economic Forecast event.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke January 4, 2019, at the Maryland Bankers Association’s First Friday Economic Outlook Forum in Baltimore.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin spoke on the national economic outlook October 3, 2018, in Charleston, West Virginia.

Charlotte, N.C., has the most diverse industrial mix of any Fifth District city. What causes industry diversity in cities?

State governments that recognize the tremendous economic value that aircraft manufacturing can bring their communities are actively courting such plants to bolster their aerospace clusters.

U.S. energy production has risen sharply in recent years and is expected to continue to grow at remarkable rates in coming decades — with benefits for the U.S. economy overall as well as within the Fifth District.