Prior to the mid-1980s, labor productivity growth was a useful barometer of the U.S. economy's performance: it was low during economic recessions and high during expansions. Since then, labor productivity has become significantly less procyclical. In the recent recession of 2008-2009, labor...

In this paper, we extend the growth model to include firm-specific technology capital and use it to assess the gains from opening to foreign direct investment. A firm's technology capital is its unique know-how from investing in research and development, brands, and organization capital. What...

A problem facing the United States is financing retirement consumption as its population ages. Policy analysts increasingly advocate savings-for-retirement systems, but are concerned with insufficient savings opportunities with limited government debt. This concern is unwarranted. First, there...

A problem that faces many countries including the United States is how to finance retirement consumption as the population ages. Proposals for switching to a saving-for-retirement system that does not rely on high payroll taxes have been challenged on the grounds that welfare would fall for some...

"Mehra and Prescott (1985) found the difference between average equity and debt returns puzzling because it was too large to be a premium for bearing nondiversifiable aggregate risk. Here, we re-examine this puzzle, taking into account some factors ignored by Mehra and Prescott--taxes,...