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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 69.
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Journal Article
A closer look at Cleveland's latest poverty ranking
News that Cleveland?s poverty rate is the worst in the nation--and rising--has elevated the community?s concern about conditions in the city. But a closer look at the way poverty rates are calculated suggests that all the possible causes of Cleveland?s ranking have not been fully understood.
Working Paper
Manufacturing Employment Losses and the Economic Performance of the Industrial Heartland
The industrial Midwest, sometimes referred to disparagingly as the ?Rust Belt,? has long been recognized as a distinct economic region and an important contributor to the US economy. Prior research has emphasized the role that losses in the manufacturing sector have played in the plight of several Midwestern states and cities, particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We identify a hypothetical industrial heartland region consisting of MSAs that have high concentrations of 1969 earnings in manufacturing relative to the US average and that are located within the geography often ...
Discussion Paper
Does wage inflation cause price inflation?
Is there any evidence to support the assumption that increased wages cause inflation? This study updates and expands earlier research into this question and finds little support for the view that higher wages cause higher prices. On the contrary, more evidence is found for higher prices leading to wage growth.
Journal Article
Alternatives to Libor in consumer mortgages
Many adjustable rate mortgages in the United States are indexed to Libor. While the accuracy of this rate has recently been called into question, another issue affecting U.S. borrowers has become evident since the onset of the financial crisis. Specifically, many U.S. consumers with Libor-based loans may have been hit with substantially higher payments when their loans reset during the financial crisis than if those loans had been tied to a Treasury rate. We investigate several alternative reference rates for consumer loans and estimate their payment effects on a large sample of Libor-linked ...
Journal Article
Productivity gains: how permanent?
This Economic Commentary confirms that productivity growth has been unusually robust over the last few years and explores reasonable assumptions about the likely future pattern of productivity growth. These assumptions can generate substantially different productivity growth paths. Government forecasts, which guide the major tax and benefit programs, have been increased in recent years yet remain cautious.
Journal Article
State employment 1995: slowing to a recession?
An appraisal of the health of the national economy based on the final state employment figures for 1995. The authors find that although employment growth has tapered off throughout the United States, there is no definitive evidence of a national recession in the near term.
Journal Article
Wage inflation and worker uncertainty
Compares two possible explanations of why pay increases continue to be moderate in a vigorous labor market--workers' uncertainty about their jobs and human resource managers' wage-setting behavior--and looks at how each explanation matches the evidence on the timing of inflation and wage changes.
Working Paper
Accounting for earnings inequality in a diverse work force
A general decomposition of earnings inequality is applied to the complete full-time labor force, including minorities and women. The results confirm that education premiums were the largest observable factor in the rise in earnings inequality in the 1980s, and also reveal an offsetting reduction in the role of race- and sex-related earnings differences.
Journal Article
Looking back at slow employment growth
An analysis of slower-than-normal employment growth in the post-1991 economic recovery, examining trends at both the state and national level and finding a widespread weakness in the rate of job addition in growing industries, rather than an unusually high job deletion rate in contracting industries.
Working Paper
Firms' wage adjustments: a break from the past?
The authors examine 39 years of wage data for workers in mobile occupations within a set of employers in three midwestern cities. They study wage changes during years of rising, falling, and steady inflation to identify regularities that could broaden understanding of the inflationary process at the micro level.