The FED Said Two-thirds of small businesses report hiring challenges. We look at the different difficulties they face and how they solve for them. Evidence from the Federal Reserve Banks’ Small Business Credit Survey Ellyn Terry and Mels de Zeeuw, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Primary Issue Understanding the sources of mismatch between the labor […] Read more
The FED Said Once upon a time, tariffs—the fees levied on imported goods—were revenue-raising instruments for the federal government as much as protection for fledgling American industries. Hefty tariffs were the U.S. government’s primary source of revenue from 1790 to 1914, pointed out Federico Mandelman, an Atlanta Fed research economist. Put simply, in the 1800s, America […] Read more
The FED Said Where a public housing project once stood on the western fringe of downtown Atlanta, a garden grows. Each year, the three-acre patch produces 35,000 pounds of kale, broccoli, collards, tomatoes, and other produce for four farmers markets and other local outlets. The Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture is a staple in […] Read more
The FED Said Firms With Natural Disaster-Related Damages Faced Insurance Mismatches and Sought Credit Financing But Struggled With Funding Gaps April 17, 2018 The Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Dallas, Richmond and San Francisco today issued the 2017 Small Business Credit Survey: Report on Disaster-Affected Firms. This is the first in a series of reports this […] Read more
Harvard Business Review When a company needs a supervisor for a team, senior leaders often anoint the team’s most productive performer. Some of these stars succeed in their new role as manager; many others do not. And when they fail, they tend to leave the organization, costing the company double: Not only has the team […] Read more
The FED Said The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker rose 3.3 percent in March. While this increase is up from 2.9 percent in February, the 12-month average remained at 3.2 percent, a bit lower than the 3.5 percent average we observed a year earlier. The absence of upward momentum in the overall Tracker may be a signal […] Read more
The FED Said Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Summary of Economic Activity Sixth District business contacts indicated that economic conditions continued to improve modestly from the previous report. The majority of contacts were relatively optimistic with expectations for continued modest growth over the next three to six months. The labor market remained tight and overall […] Read more
The FED Said In a recent macroblog post, we shared some results of a joint national survey that is an ongoing collaboration between the Atlanta Fed, Nick Bloom of Stanford University, and Steve Davis of the University of Chicago, and Jose Barrero of Stanford University. (By the way, we’re planning on calling this work the “Survey […] Read more
Harvard Business Review Over the past few decades, Silicon Valley has been such a powerful engine for entrepreneurship in technology that, all too often, it is considered to be some kind of panacea. Corporate executives seek to inject “Silicon Valley DNA” into their cultures, and policy makers point to venture-funded entrepreneurship as a solution for […] Read more
The FED Said “Location, location, location” is a truism associated with residential real estate. What we’re hearing from our construction contacts could be another sort of truism: “Labor, lumber, lots.” They are referring to the ongoing tight labor market in the construction trades, the skyrocketing price of lumber, and the difficulty of obtaining lots on […] Read more
Harvard Business review Passenger electric cars get all the press, especially when someone launches one into space. But something important is going on in the world of commercial vehicles as well. Last year Tesla announced it would produce an electric long-haul big rig. PepsiCo, Walmart, and UPS promptly committed to buying a few hundred. More recently, UPS made an important announcement about its plans […] Read more
The FED Said Economic activity in the Southeast continued to grow modestly from early January through mid-February, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s latest Beige Book report on conditions in the six states of the Sixth Federal Reserve District, released on March 7 . Among the noteworthy items in the report are signals that […] Read more
Harvard Business Review With the flick of a switch, a handful of tech giants can change the nature and extent of mankind’s ingestion of information. In 2013, Google took a step towards understanding the intent of their users with the Hummingbird algorithm. Twitter replaced most-recent with most-important tweets when they introduced their algorithmic timeline in 2016. Facebook claimed […] Read more
The FED Said The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 substantially reduced corporate taxes, from 35 percent to 21 percent. Some commentators and practitioners have voiced concerns about how the new tax law will affect demand for Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), America’s primary mechanism for producing new or refurbished affordable housing […] Read more
What the Data Says About Women in Management Between 1980 and 2010 Harvard Business Review Advancement toward gender equality at work has slowed since the 1990s for three major reasons: people’s attitudes stopped becoming more gender egalitarian, occupations stopped gender integrating, and the gender wage gap began decreasing at slower rates. Sociologist Paula England has called this phenomenon an […] Read more