Farm Lending Slows but Remains High

By Cortney Cowley and Ty Kreitman Growth in farm lending activity slowed in the third quarter of 2019.

Negative Nominal Interest Rates Can Worsen Liquidity Traps

By Andrew Glover A workhorse macroeconomic model predicts that negative interest rates would likely deepen a recession caused by self-fulfilling pessimism about aggregate demand.

Consumption in the Great Recession: The Financial Distress Channel

By Kartik Athreya, Ryan Mather, José Mustre-del-Río and Juan Sánchez The U.S. entered the Great Recession with a high and geographically diverse incidence of household financial distress. This dispersion, combined with the fact that highly financially distressed regions experienced the largest housing busts, exacerbated the drop in aggregate consumption during the recession.

Disappearing Routine Occupations and Declining Prime-Age Labor Force Participation

By Didem Tuzemen The disappearance of routine jobs has been a substantial contributor to the decline in labor force participation among prime-age individuals, especially those with lower educational attainment.

New and Existing Small Business Commercial and Industrial Loan Balances Decline Year-Over-Year

By Christi May-Oder, Assistant Vice President and Allison Jakubek, Supervisory Analyst The dollar volume of new small business commercial and industrial (C&I) loan balances declined 10.5 percent in the second quarter of 2019 compared with the second quarter of 2018, with outstanding small business C&I balances declining 0.8 percent for the same period. The decline in new small business C&I loans was driven by decreases in term loans and credit lines of 8.6 percent and 13.3 percent, respectively.