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Journal Article
Will the real price of housing drop sharply in the 1990s?
Journal Article
How fast can the U.S. economy grow?
Journal Article
Has the stock market crash reduced consumer spending?
Some forecasters expected that the October 1987 stock market collapse would seriously lower GNP growth by curtailing consumer spending. After declining in October, however, consumer spending has grown moderately. This relatively small effect is consistent with empirical studies showing that the stock market has only a modest impact on consumer spending.
Journal Article
Social Security privatization: balancing efficiency and fairness
This article examines these fundamental issues of economic efficiency and fairness that should be weighed when considering Social Security privatization. The first section summarizes the challenges to the current system and outlines various options for reform. The second section explains how privatization could improve economic efficiency, and briefly considers the difficult issue of the transition costs in moving from the current system to full privatization. The third section discusses important issues of fairness within and across generations. Any decision to privatize Social Security will ...
Journal Article
Does interest rate volatility affect money demand?
Journal Article
Should the decline in the personal saving rate be a cause for concern?
The personal saving rate has received particular attention recently because saving was negative in 2005 for the first time since the Great Depression. Although saving declined in other developed countries during this period, the U.S. decline was more pronounced than in most of these countries. ; A major concern is whether U.S. households are providing adequately for long-term needs, such as future retirement and medical expenses. In addition, low personal saving has created short-run concerns that a sudden increase in the saving rate could reduce growth of consumer spending, real output, and ...
Journal Article
Progress toward price stability : a 1998 inflation report
Price stability was not literally achieved in 1998, as many measures of the price level continued to rise, and inflation expectations were well above zero. Yet in 1998, consumer prices rose at the lowest rate in over a decade, and any upward pressures on inflation were surprisingly subdued.> Although many economists still worry about potential upward pressures on the inflation rate, last year's low inflation and foreign economic crises have produced a new set of concerns. In particular, some economic observers and financial market participants are concerned that disinflation, the process of ...
Working Paper
The predictive usefulness of consumer sentiment data
Journal Article
An inflation report for 1999
The U.S. economy turned in an exceptional performance in 1999, combining strong real output growth with moderate inflation. Real GDP, a broad measure of the nation's output of goods and services, grew 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 1998 to the fourth quarter of 1999. Employment also rose solidly, and the civilian unemployment rate declined to the lowest level in about 30 years. Although rising world oil prices caused consumer prices to increase faster than in 1998, core inflation measures, which exclude food and energy prices, were about the same or slightly lower. Moreover, survey ...
Journal Article
Recent developments in nonresidential construction activity