Midyear update: major metros driving Texas expansion

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ; Business cycles ; Maquiladora ; Employment ; Unemployment ; Retail trade

Will office real estate in Texas ever recover?

Real property ; Texas

Does being different matter?

Changes in the demographic structure of the U.S. population will affect many aspects of the US economy as we move into the next century. Concerns about the impact of an aging population on savings and interest rates, the financing of government spending programs for the elderly, and the possibility of higher taxes for future generations to pay for them have become hot topics, both in the press and among economists. Another concern is whether rising immigration will place an even greater burden on the government. In this article, Finn Kydland and D'Ann Petersen present a framework economists can use to shed ight quantitatively on such issues where individual differences matter. They also discuss why, for a certain class of questions, being different does not matter. In the final section, the authors present findings from current research that deals with the issues mentioned above.Emigration and immigration ; Social security ; Saving and investment

From baby boom to housing bust? How demographics will affect housing demand

Housing ; Population

Demographics and the long-term outlook for housing investment

John Hill and D'Ann Petersen measure the importance of projected shifts in the size and age distribution of the U.S. population for domestic housing investment. Their analysis runs through the year 2010 and provides separate estimates for single-family and multifamily investment. ; Hill and Petersen find that the contractionary effects of the population slowdown are already being felt in the housing industry and probably have been since the latter part of the 1980s. In Hill and Petersen's simulations, demographic shifts lower net housing investment by 17 percent from the late 1980s through the first half of the 1990s. Population factors then reduce net investment an additional 22 percent through the year 2005 before turning favorable. ; Hill and Petersen discuss the implications of their findings for construction jobs and housing prices. They suggest that the population slowdown need not produce an absolute contraction in housing employment. It will, however, reduce housing's share of national employment by as much as one-third. According to the authors, the changing demographics do not provide a compelling reason for average home prices to suffer a deep decline. They do suggest, however, that significant relative price adjustments may need to take place between different types of homes.Demography ; Housing

The Texas construction sector: the tail that wagged the dog

The boom-to-bust days of the Texas construction industry will linger in people's memory for many years. D'Ann Petersen, Keith Phillips, and Mine Yucel examine the factors that led to the rise and fall of the Texas construction industry and determine the role the industry played in the state's volatile economy during the 1970s and 1980s. ; Petersen, Phillips, and Yucel employ an econometric model to analyze the roles residential and nonresidential construction played in the state's economic fluctuations from 1976 through 1990. The authors find that, although large swings in oil prices were the greatest source of economic instability in the Texas economy, the construction sector also played an important and independent role in the changing fortunes of the state. The authors' results show that the homebuilding sector, in particular, had a large impact on the Texas economy. In addition, the authors find that the state's economy needs several years to adjust to shocks in the construction industry. Consequently, the current expansion in residential construction is likely to have positive economic effects in the years ahead.Construction industry ; Texas

Regional update

Federal Reserve District, 11th