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| U.S. Economycirculation when commercial banks use their reserves to buy currency from the Federal Reserve Bank. Second, the regional Federal Reserve banks transfer funds for checks that are deposited by a bank in one part of the country, but were written by someone who has a checking account with a bank in another part of the country. Millions of checks are processed this way every business day. Third, the regional Federal Reserve Banks collect and analyze data on the economic performance of their regions, and provide that information and their analysis of it to the national Federal Reserve System. Each of the 12 regions served by the Federal Reserve banks has its own economic characteristics. Some of these regional economies are concerned more with agricultural issues than others; some with different types of manufacturing and industries; some with international trade; and some with financial markets and firms. After reviewing the reports from all different parts of the country, the national Federal Reserve System then adopts policies that have major effects on the entire U.S. economy. By far the most important function of the Federal Reserve System is controlling the nation’s money supply and the overall availability of credit in the economy. If the Federal Reserve System wants to put more money in the economy, it does not ask the Treasury to print more dollar bills. Remember, much more money is held in checking and savings accounts than as currency, and it is through those deposit accounts that the Federal Reserve System most directly controls the money supply. The Federal Reserve affects deposit accounts in one of three ways. First, it can allow banks to hold a smaller percentage of their deposits as reserves at the Federal Reserve System. A lower reserve requirement allows banks to make more loans and earn more money from the interest paid on those loans. Banks making more loans increase the money supply. Conversely, a higher reserve requirement reduces the amount of loans banks can make, which reduces or tightens the money supply. The second way the Federal Reserve System can put more money into the economy is by lowering the rate it charges banks when they borrow money from the Federal Reserve System. This particular interest rate is known as the discount rate. When the discount rate goes down, it is more likely that banks will borrow money from the Federal Reserve System, to cover their reserve requirements and support more loans to borrowers. Once again, those loans will increase the nation’s money supply. Therefore, a decrease in the discount rate can increase the money supply, while an increase in the discount rate can decrease the money supply. In practice, however, banks rarely borrow money from the Federal Reserve, so changes in the discount rate are more important as a signal of whether the Federal Reserve wants to increase or decrease the money supply. For example, raising the discount rate may alert banks that the Federal Reserve might take other actions, such as increasing the reserve requirement. That signal can lead banks to reduce the amount of loans they are making. The third way the Federal Reserve System can adjust the supply of money and the availability of credit in the economy is through its open market operations—the buying or selling of government bonds. Open market operations are actually the tool that the Federal Reserve uses most often to change the money supply. These open-market operations take place in the market for government securities. The U.S. government borrows money by issuing bonds that are regularly auctioned on the bond market in New York. The Federal Reserve System is one of the largest purchasers of those bonds, and the bank changes the amount of money in the economy when it buys or sells bonds. Government bonds are not money, because they are not generally accepted as final payment for goods and services. (Just try paying for a hamburger with a government savings bond.) But when the Federal Reserve System pays for a federal government bond with a check, that check is new money—specifically, it represents a loan to the government. This loan creates a higher balance in the government’s own checking account after the funds have been transferred from the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank to the government. That new money is put into the economy as soon as the government spends the funds. On the other hand, if the Federal Reserve sells government bonds, it collects money that is taken out of circulation, since the bonds that the Federal Reserve sells to banks, firms, or households cannot be used as money until they are redeemed at a later date. The Wall Street Journal and other financial media regularly report on purchases of bonds made by the Federal Reserve and other buyers at auctions of U.S. government bonds. The Federal Reserve System itself also publishes a record of its buying and selling in the bond market. In practice, since the U.S. economy is growing and the money supply must grow with it to keep prices stable, the Federal Reserve is almost always buying bonds, not selling them. What changes over time is how fast the Federal Reserve wants the money supply to grow, and how many dollars worth of bonds it purchases from month to month. To summarize the Federal Reserve System’s tools of monetary policy: It can increase the supply of money and the availability of credit by lowering the percentage of deposits that banks must hold as reserves at the Federal Reserve System, by lowering the discount rate, or by purchasing government bonds through open market operations. The Federal Reserve System can decrease the supply of money and the availability of credit by raising reserve ratios, raising the discount rate, or by selling government bonds. The Federal Reserve System increases the money supply when it wants to encourage more spending in the economy, and especially when it is concerned about high levels of unemployment. Increasing the money supply usually decreases interest rates—which are the price of money paid by those who borrow funds to those who save and lend them. Lower interest rates encourage more investment spending by businesses, and more spending by households for houses, automobiles, and other “big ticket” items that are often financed by borrowing money. That additional spending increases national levels of production, employment, and income. However, the Federal Reserve Bank must be very careful when increasing the money supply. If it does so when the economy is already operating close to full employment, the additional spending will increase only prices, not output and employment. Effect of Monetary Policies on the U.S. Economy The monetary policies adopted by the Federal Reserve System can have dramatic effects on the national economy and, in particular, on financial markets. Most directly, of course, when the Federal Reserve System increases the money supply and expands the availability of credit, then the interest rate, which determines the amount of money that borrowers pay for loans, is likely to decrease. Lower interest rates, in turn, will encourage businesses to borrow more money to invest in capital goods, and will stimulate households to borrow more money to purchase housing, automobiles, and other goods. But the Federal Reserve System can go too far in expanding the money supply. If the supply of money and credit grows much faster than the production of goods and services in the economy, then prices will increase, and the rate of inflation will rise. Inflation is a serious problem for those who live on fixed incomes, since the income of those individuals remains constant while the amount of goods and services they can purchase with their income decreases. Inflation may also hurt banks and other financial institutions that lend money, as well as savers. In a period of unanticipated inflation, as the value of money decreases in terms of what it will purchase, loans are repaid with dollars that are worth less. The funds that people have saved are worth less, too. When banks and savers anticipate higher inflation, they will try to protect themselves by demanding higher interest rates on loans and savings accounts. This will be especially true on long-term loans and savings deposits, if the higher inflation is considered likely to continue for many years. But higher interest rates create problems for borrowers and those who want to invest in capital goods. If the supply of money and credit grows too slowly, however, then interest rates are again likely to rise, leading to decreased spending for capital investments and consumer durable goods (products designed for long-term use, such as television sets, refrigerators, and personal computers). Such decreased spending will hurt many businesses and may lead to a recession, an economic slowdown in which the national output of goods and services falls. When that happens, wages and salaries paid to individual workers will fall or grow more slowly, and some workers will be laid off, facing possibly long periods of unemployment. For all of these reasons, bankers and other financial experts watch the Federal Reserve’s actions with monetary policy very closely. There are regular reports in the media about policy changes made by the Federal Reserve System, and even about statements made by Federal Reserve officials that may indicate that the Federal Reserve is going to change the supply of money and interest rates. The chairman of the Federal Reserve System is widely considered to be one of the most influential people in the world because what the Federal Reserve does so dramatically affects the U.S. and world economies, especially financial markets. LABOR AND LABOR MARKETS Labor includes work done for employers and work done in a person’s own household, but labor markets deal only with work that is done for some form of financial compensation. Labor markets include all the means by which workers find jobs and by which employers locate workers to staff their businesses. A number of factors influence labor and labor markets in the United States, including immigration, discrimination, labor unions, unemployment, and income inequality between the rich and poor. The official definition of the U.S. labor force includes people who are at least 16 years old and either working, waiting to be recalled from a layoff, or actively looking for work within the past 30 days. In 1998 the U.S. labor force included nearly 138 million people, most of them working in full-time or part-time jobs. Most people in the United States receive their income as wages and salaries paid by firms that have hired individuals to work as their employees. Those wages and salaries are the prices they receive for the labor services they provide to their employers. Like other prices, wages and salaries are determined primarily by market forces. Labor Supply and Demand The wages and salaries that U.S. workers earn vary from occupation to occupation, across geographic regions, and according to workers’ levels of education, training, experience, and skill. As with goods and services purchased by consumers, labor is traded in markets that reflect both supply and demand. In general, higher wages and salaries are paid in occupations where labor is more scarce—that is, in jobs where the demand for workers is relatively high and the supply of workers with the qualifications and ability to do that work is relatively low. The demand for workers in particular occupations depends largely on how much the work they do adds to a firm’s revenues. In other words, workers who create more products or higher-priced products will be worth more to employers than workers who make fewer or less valuable products. The supply of workers in any occupation is affected by the amount of time and effort required to enter that occupation compared to other things workers might do. Workers seeking higher wages often learn skills that will increase the likelihood of finding a higher-paying job. The knowledge, skills, and experience a worker has acquired are the worker’s human capital. Education and training can clearly increase workers’ human capital and productivity, which makes them more valuable to employers. In general, more educated individuals make more money at their jobs. However, a greater level of education does not always guarantee higher wages. Certain professions that demand a high level of education, such as teaching elementary and secondary school, are not high-paying. Such situations arise when the number of people with the training to do that job is relatively large compared with the number of people that employers want to hire. Of course this situation can change over time if, for example, fewer young people choose to train for the profession. Supply and demand factors change in labor markets, just as they do in markets for goods and services. As a result, occupations that paid high wages and salaries in the past sometimes become outdated, while entirely new occupations are created as a result of technological change or changes in the goods and services consumers demand. For example, blacksmiths were once among the most skilled workers in the United States; today, computer programmers and software developers are in great demand. The process of creative destruction carries over from product markets to labor markets because the demand for particular goods and services creates a demand for the labor to produce them. Conversely, when the demand for particular goods or services decreases, the demand for labor to produce them will also fall. Similarly, when new technologies create new products or new ways of producing existing products, some workers will have new job opportunities, but other workers might have to retrain, relocate, or take new jobs. Factors Affecting Labor Markets Changes in society and in the makeup of the population also affect labor markets. For example, starting in the 1960s it became more common for married women to work outside the home. Unprecedented numbers of women—many with little previous job experience and training—entered the labor markets for the first time during the 1970s. As a result, wages for entry-level jobs were pushed down and did not rise as rapidly as they had in the past. This decline in entry-level wages was further fueled by huge numbers of teens who were also entering the labor market for the first time. These young people were the children of the baby boom of 1946 to 1964, a period in which the birth rate increased dramatically in the United States. So, two changes—one affecting women’s roles in the labor market, the other in the makeup of the age of the workforce—combined to affect the labor market. The baby boomers’ effects have continued to reverberate through the U.S. economy. For example, starting salaries for people with college degrees became depressed when large numbers of baby boomers started graduating from college. And as workers born during the boom have aged, the work force in the United States has grown progressively older, with the percentage of workers under the age of 25 falling from 20.3 percent in 1980 to 14.3 percent in 1997. By the 1990s, the women and baby boomers who first entered the job market in the 1970s had acquired more experience and training. Therefore, the aging of the labor force was not affecting entry-level jobs as it once did, and starting salaries for college graduates were rising rapidly again. There will be, however, other kinds of labor market and public policy issues to face when the baby boomers begin to retire in the early decades of the 21st century. Immigration Labor markets in the United States have also been significantly affected by the immigration of families and workers from other nations. Most families and workers in the United States can trace their heritage to immigrants. In fact, before the 20th century, while the United States was trying to settle its frontiers, it allowed essentially unlimited immigration. see Immigration: A Nation of Immigrants. In these periods the U.S. economy had more land and other natural resources than it was able to use, because labor was so scarce. Immigration served as one of the main remedies for this shortage of labor. Generally, immigration raises national output and income levels. These changes occur because immigration increases the number of workers in the economy, which allows employers to produce more goods and services. Capital resources in the economy may also become more valuable as immigration increases. The number of workers available to work with machines and tools increases, as does the number of consumers who want to buy goods and services. However, wages for jobs that are filled by large numbers of immigrants may decrease. This wage decline stems from greater competition for these jobs and from the fact that many immigrants are willing to work for lower wages than other U.S. workers. Immigration into the United States is now regulated by a system of quotas that limits the number of immigrants who can legally enter the country each year. In 1964 Congress changed immigration policies to give preference to those with families already in the United States, to refugees facing political persecution, and to individuals with other humanitarian concerns. Before that time, more weight had been placed on immigrants’ labor-market skills. Although this change in policy helped reunite families, it also increased the supply of unskilled labor in the nation, especially in the states of California, Florida, and New York. In 1990 Congress modified the immigration legislation to set a separate annual quota for immigrants with job skills needed in the United States. But people with family members who are already U.S. citizens remain the largest category of immigrants, and U.S. immigration law still puts less focus on job skills than do immigration laws in many other market economies, including Canada and many of the nations of Western Europe. Discrimination Women and many minorities have long faced discrimination in U.S. labor markets. Employed women earn less, on average, than men with similar levels of education. In part this wage disparity reflects different educational choices that women and men have made. In the past, women have been less likely to study engineering, sciences, and other technical fields that generally pay more. In part, the wage differences result from women leaving the job market for a period of years to raise children. Another reason for the disparity in wages between men and women is that there is still a considerable degree of occupational segregation between males and females—for example, nurses are much more likely to be females and dentists males. But even after allowing for those factors, studies Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 |
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