Current forecasts suggest that the federal funds rate in the future is likely to level out at a rather low level by historical standards. If so, then the FOMC will have less ability than in the past to cut short-term interest rates in response to a future recession, suggesting a risk that...

Departures from a production or cost frontier may reflect the systematic effect of conditions that contribute to inefficiency. To test whether some portion of frontier function departures can be systematically explained, the frontier inefficiency error component is modeled as a function of...