The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) represents a radically new way to manage databases. Since money and payments are all about managing databases and since banks play a central role in money and payments, DAO-based money and payments systems are potentially a disruptive force in the banking system—which includes central banks.
The Federal Reserve System (Fed) is a regular feature in the media. When the Fed communicates with the public, its focus is on forward guidance related to monetary policy—specifically, for achieving low unemployment and low inflation.
The US labor force participation rate (LFPR) experienced a record drop during the early pandemic. While it has since recovered to 62.2 percent as of December 2022, it was still 1.41 percentage points below its pre-pandemic peak.
To better understand the tight post-pandemic labor market in the US, we decompose the decline in aggregate hours worked into extensive margin changes (fewer people working) and intensive margin changes (workers working fewer hours). Although the preexisting trend of lower labor force participation, especially by young men without a bachelor's degree, accounts for some of the decline in aggregate hours, the intensive margin accounts for more than half of the decline between 2019 and 2022.
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