8 posts on "Economic Insights"
August 12, 2026
Examining State and Local Affordable Housing Policy and Programs
Communities around the nation are grappling with a shortage of affordable housing. In this article, the second in a two-part series, we highlight key ideas from a recent roundtable the New York Fed held with Second District policymakers, bankers, and developers. The discussion centered on factors that are limiting the supply of affordable housing and the possibility that creative financing could spur new affordable developments.
August 11, 2026
Innovating to Increase Housing Supply and Affordability
New York State, like much of the country, is grappling with producing more housing units—including those serving low- and moderate-income residents. The New York Fed and NYU’s Furman Center recently convened a series of roundtables that brought together builders, developers, and housing experts to discuss affordable housing challenges and solutions. This article, the first in a two-part series on the issue, reflects the discussion, with a focus on factors that make housing more expensive to build and ideas to reduce costs and increase production.
September 23, 2025
Tracking the Economy in Real‑Time Through Regional Business Surveys
Federal Reserve policymakers need current information about economic conditions to make well-informed monetary policy decisions. But hard data, such as GDP and the unemployment rate, is released with a significant lag, making it difficult to get a precise, real-time read on the economy, especially during times of rapid change.
Posted in Economic Insights | Permalink
August 25, 2025
Key Takeaways from President Williams’s Remarks on the Economic Stars
In remarks at a conference in Mexico City on August 25, New York Fed President John C. Williams addressed three questions pertaining to the importance, measurement, and use of time-varying unobservable variables at central banks, with a particular focus on the neutral rate of interest, or r-star.
June 5, 2025
The Research Scouting Team: A Resource in Uncharted Territory
As the director of research at the New York Fed, I lead a team that intensively studies the economy. In addition to evaluating monetary policy and labor markets, our team works to better understand topics including financial market function, supply chain constraints, hybrid work, student loan delinquencies, and housing starts.
Posted in Economic Insights | Permalink
June 24, 2024
Why Inflation Expectations Matter: Celebrating 10 Years of Our Survey of Consumer Expectations
In this recurring column, Kartik Athreya, the New York Fed’s Director of Research, draws connections between broader economic policy issues and our everyday lives.
Expectations shape behavior. That’s why the Survey of Consumer Expectations, now in its 10th year, is such an important tool for central bankers. The monthly survey, produced by our Center for Microeconomic Data, has three main components: inflation expectations, labor market expectations, and household finance expectations. While all these expectations are important, I’ll focus here on inflation expectations, and how they shape people’s actions.
Posted in Economic Insights | Permalink
May 29, 2024
When Are Demand and Supply Shocks ‘Drivers’ of Inflation?
In this recurring column, Kartik Athreya, the New York Fed’s Director of Research, draws connections between broader economic policy issues and our everyday lives.
A type of statement one frequently hears, and that I myself sometimes make, is that “inflation is being driven by item X being stuck in a supply-chain mess,” or “item Y being suddenly in great demand,” and so on.
Posted in Economic Insights | Permalink
April 9, 2024
A Focus on ‘Equitable’ and ‘Growth’ in Understanding the Economy
Though I only just joined the New York Fed in February, I’ve been closely following its equitable growth research for nearly five years. Recently, I spoke with researchers from a broad range of areas across the Federal Reserve System, including micro-, macro-, and financial economics, about why “equitable” and “growth” are important to our understanding of the economy. Given today’s release of our Equitable Growth Indicators, I want to share more broadly, in my view, why this work matters to us.
Posted in Economic Insights | Permalink
