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Report
Understanding the persistence of poverty
Millions of U.S. citizens continue to live in poverty within one of the wealthiest and most productive nations in the world. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's 2006 Annual Report reviews some of the reasons for the persistence of poverty in America and suggests that better education and training may be the best defense against poverty.
Journal Article
Per capita income growth and disparity in the United States, 1929–2003
Economic theory says the average income of different regions should grow closer over time. Within the United States and across some of the richer countries, evidence suggests this is true.
Journal Article
Wage and employer changes over the life cycle
Economists have long observed that wages alone do not fully reflect a job?s value?job ?amenities? also play a role. Recent empirical studies have confirmed this observation to be the case. Researchers are also finding that workers frequently choose to take lower-paying jobs, which suggests that not only do workers care about the non-wage characteristics of a job, but also that they will change jobs throughout their lives to achieve the best mix of wages and amenities that is right (and obtainable) for them.
Journal Article
Okun's law revisited: should we worry about low unemployment?
A review of the connection between labor resource utilization and the growth/unemployment correlation summarized by Okun's law, showing that the instability of that relationship, particularly over short time horizons, has important implications for monetary policy.
Journal Article
What’s really going on in housing markets?
Most of the public concern about housing markets is based on claims that house prices have increased at historically anomalous rates and that house prices have outpaced incomes. The first claim is based on inaccurate historical data. The second is linked to relaxed credit constraints. House prices are likely to fall further, but not for the reasons usually proposed.
Journal Article
How much of economic growth is fueled by investment-specific technological progress?
Discovering how economies grow is vitally important for economists and policymakers alike. This Commentary shows that more than half of U.S. economic growth can be attributed to technological advance in equipment and structures.
Journal Article
Mortgage interest deductibility and housing prices
An analysis of how implementing a flat tax on income and ending the deductibility of mortgage interest payments would affect housing prices. The authors show that, to the extent prices decline, higher-income households would bear most of the impact, but increases in the value of their other assets might mitigate the drop in the price of their homes.
Journal Article
A beautiful theory
It wasn?t A Beautiful Mind?the book or the movie?that made John Forbes Nash, Jr., famous. It was his work in game theory, a theory that models strategic interactions between people as games. Before Nash, the only games theorists could get a handle on were artificial ones with no real-world applications. Nash?s insights enabled economists to expand the use of game theory to interesting practical problems.
Journal Article
Infrastructure and the wealth of nations
Economies can't grow without a sufficiently developed infrastructure, but how deep does the infrastructure have to be to make a difference? The authors take a look at some research from the Fraser Institute that examines the relationship between economic growth and economic infrastructure across 123 countries. They find that infrastructure is a bit of an all-or-nothing proposition.
Journal Article
Life-cycle income and consumption variability
By all accounts, economic inequality is growing?the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. This Economic Commentary explores inequality in income and consumption and asks whether inequality is determined early in life, before individuals enter the labor market, or whether it becomes manifest during the working years