President Pianalto gave a brief perspective on the national economy and then described some of the longer-term challenges we have been facing here in Ohio. Finally, she discussed the importance of innovation and human capital to the region's future.

Economists at our Bank have concluded that differences in state income levels over the past 75 years can be explained mostly by two factors: innovation and education. In simple terms, those states that enhance their knowledge base are the ones that are likely to prosper in the future.

Older, industrial cities have suffered with the shift from manufacturing to services, but the increased importance of innovation as an economic driver may help industrial cities, which are often rich in the institutions that generate innovation. This paper studies how innovation is related to...

Raising the share of adults with college degrees in a region or jurisdiction is a nearly universal goal of regional policymakers. They believe that education, as summarized by this statistic, is the cause of increasing employment, productivity, and wages. Using statistics estimated from the...

Real average U.S. per capita personal income growth over the last 65 years exceeded a remarkable 400 percent. Also notable over this period is that the stark income differences across states have narrowed considerably: In 1939 the highest income state’s per capita personal income was 4.5 times...