Recent experience with disasters and terrorist attacks in the US indicates that state and local governments rely on the federal sector for support after disasters occur. But these same governments are responsible for investing in infrastructure designed to reduce vulnerability to natural and...

This paper examines the linkage between economic activity and tax revenues for New York State and New York City. Drawing upon the methodology of Stock and Watson, we use a dynamic single-factor model to estimate indexes of coincident economic indicators. We also construct measures of the sales...

Household surveys are the source of some of the most widely studied data on consumer balance sheets, with the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) generally cited as the leading source of wealth data for the United States. At the same time, recent research questions survey respondents' propensity...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) Consumer Credit Panel, created from a sample of U.S. consumer credit reports, is an ongoing panel of quarterly data on individual and household debt. The panel shows a substantial run-up in total consumer indebtedness between the first quarter of 1999...

Since the end of the Great Recession, growth in health care spending has declined to historically low levels. There is disagreement over whether this decline was caused by falling incomes during the Great Recession (and therefore is likely to reverse once the recovery is complete) or whether the...

Borrowers' housing equity is an important component of their wealth and a critical determinant of their vulnerability to shocks. In this paper, we create a unique data set that allows us to provide a comprehensive look at the ratio of housing debt to housing values - what we refer to as...

Since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, consumer financial and borrowing behavior, once considered a relatively quiet little corner of finance, has been of enormously increased interest to policymakers and researchers alike. Prior to the Great Recession, there was a historic run-up in...

[...]In this article, we analyze the effects of September 11 on thelonger run prospects for the New York City economy. We findthat, on the one hand, several downside risks to the city’sgrowth outlook have arisen. In a worst-case scenario, theconcentration of the attack on Lower Manhattan has...

Public infrastructure is an important part of a wellfunctioningurban economy. Such infrastructure—definedhere as publicly owned and maintained physical capital—hashistorically played a central role in allowing cities to grow bymitigating or reducing problems such as congested...

The boom in nonprime mortgage lending that occurred inthe United States between 2004 and 2006 was quicklyfollowed by rapid increases in the rate of delinquencies andforeclosures on these loans.1 This pronounced deteriorationalarmed investors, the public, and policymakers.2...