Dec 18, 2024

Bethany Greene and Jason Kosakow review the damage wrought on communities in western North Carolina and other parts of the Fifth District from Hurricane Helene last September. They also share what their business contacts have told them about Helene's economic impacts, both within and outside of the hurricane's path....

Dec 11, 2024

John Bailey Jones and Urvi Neelakantan discuss their research on the living arrangements of older individuals and the implications of these homeowners aging in place for wealth accumulation and housing markets. Jones is vice president of microeconomic analysis and Neelakantan is a senior policy economist at the Federal...

Dec 4, 2024

Felipe Schwartzman explains how he and other economists define the natural rate of interest, what factors have influenced this theoretical estimate of where long-term interest rates will settle, and what it tells us about how the cost of savings and borrowing will respond as monetary policy normalizes after the COVID-19...

Nov 20, 2024

For our 150th episode, Anna Kovner reviews her career path to becoming the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and reflects on the work of the Bank's Research department. Kovner also offers her views on various topics — including the banking turmoil of 2023, the Fed's "lender of last resort"...

Nov 13, 2024

Alaina Barca and Surekha Carpenter examine the decline in the number of bank branches in certain communities and the economic effects of that trend. They also share data from the Banking Deserts Dashboard developed for the Fed Communities website. Barca is a community development research analyst at the Philadelphia...