Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve: FEDS Notes – Mobile Banking: A Closer Look at Survey Measures

Ellen A. Merry1 The growing use of smartphones and the Internet has brought rapid change to financial services. These new technologies have given consumers and banks new tools for managing money and changed the customer-bank relationship. They have also raised new concerns about security and access. Mobile banking may help to address some challenges consumers…

Federal Reserve: CRA Examination Schedule for Second and Third Quarter 2018 Released

The Federal Reserve has released the CRA examination schedules for the second and third quarters of 2018: Second Quarter 2018 Third Quarter 2018

Interagency Statement: Agencies to Give Favorable CRA Consideration to Revitalization Activities in Disaster Areas Affected by Hurricane Maria

OCC Statement FDIC Statement Federal Reserve Statement The federal bank regulatory agencies today announced they will give favorable consideration under Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations to institutions that are located outside of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, which were designated as major disaster areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, for bank activities…

Federal Reserve: From Income to Consumption Inequality? Looking through the Lens of Motor Vehicle Purchases

Wendy Dunn and Maria D. Tito1 Rising income inequality in the United States over the past several decades has been well documented in the economics literature.2 Recent studies have also looked at the dispersion in consumption, since it more accurately captures disparities in economic well-being. Here, however, the findings are mixed–while some authors find the…

Federal Reseve: Entrepreneurship and State Taxation

FEDS 2018-03 Entrepreneurship and State Taxation (PDF) E. Mark Curtis and Ryan A. Decker Abstract: Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the economy, yet there exists little well-identified research into the effects of taxes on startup activity. Using recently developed county-level data on startups, we examine the effect of states’ corporate, personal and sales tax…

Federal Reserve: New Interactive Data Tools Added to Website for the Financial Accounts of the United States

The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday added three new tools to its web site to provide interactive access to data from the Board’s Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1) release, which tracks the aggregate wealth of U.S. households and other economic sectors. The data visualization tools show, at a glance, the evolution of key…

Federal Reserve: Inequality in 3-D – Income, Consumption and Wealth

Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) Inequality in 3-D: Income, Consumption, and Wealth (PDF) by  Jonathan Fisher, David Johnson, Timothy Smeeding, and Jeffrey Thompson Abstract: We do not need to and should not have to choose amongst income, consumption, or wealth as the superior measure of well-being. All three individually and jointly determine well-being. We…

Federal Reserve: Recent Trends in Small Business Lending and the Community Reinvestment Act

Tim Dore and Traci Mach In this note, we analyze data on small business loan originations collected under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to document heterogeneity in the recovery in small business lending since the financial crisis. Small business loan originations by CRA respondents declined significantly between 2007 and 2010 and, by 2016, have only…

Federal Reserve: Assessing the Severity of Rent Burden on Low-Income Families

Jeff Larrimore, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,1 and Jenny Schuetz, Brookings Institution Housing costs are a severe financial burden to many low-income families. The typical renter in the bottom quintile of the income distribution spends more than half of monthly income on rent and has less than $500 dollars left after paying…

Federal Reserve: Expectations for Supervised Institutions Regarding Amended Regulation C

Expectations for Supervised Institutions Regarding Amended Regulation C Applicability to Community Banking Organizations: This guidance applies to all institutions supervised by the Federal Reserve, including those with total consolidated assets of $10 billion or less. This letter provides guidance on the Federal Reserve Board’s supervisory expectations in connection with early examinations of Board-supervised institutions for…