The Great Recession has been hard on recent college graduates, but it has been even harder for black recent college graduates. This report examines the labor-market outcomes of black recent college graduates using the general approach developed by Federal Reserve Bank of New York researchers...

Patent monopolies have long been used as a mechanism for financing innovation and research. The logic is that the government awards a monopoly on a product or process for a limited period of time in order to reward innovation. However, in addition to providing incentives for innovation and...

Critics of legislation requiring employers to provide paid sick days frequently argue that these measures will lead to job loss and raise the national unemployment rate. However, this issue brief shows that the experience of 22 countries with the highest level of social and economic development...

This report finds that the U.S. is the only country among 22 countries ranked highly in terms of economic and human development that does not guarantee that workers receive paid sick days or paid sick leave. Under current U.S. labor law, employers are not required to provide short-term paid sick...

This paper uses data from the Current Population Surveys for 1980 through 2011 to review trends in health-insurance coverage rates for low-wage workers (defined as workers in the bottom fifth of the wage distribution in each survey year). In 2010, over 38 percent of low-wage workers lacked...

The Brazilian economy grew by 4.2 percent annually from 2004-2010, more than double its annual growth from 1999-2003 or indeed its growth rate over the prior quarter century. This growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, especially after 2005, as well as...

The Argentine economy has grown 94 percent for the years 2002-2011, using International Monetary Fund projections for the end of this year. This is the fastest growth in the Western Hemisphere for this period, and among the highest growth rates in the world. It also compares favorably to...

This paper examines some of the economic issues that could be relevant to Mexico’s July 1st presidential election. These include the short-term impact of the 2008-2009 recession and recovery; the longer-term record of Mexico’s economy since the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) party took power...

Outside observers could be forgiven for expecting Ecuador to suffer terribly during and after the recent global crisis. Two of the country’s largest sources of foreign earnings, petroleum exports and remittances from abroad, crashed during the global recession. Furthermore, lacking its own...

A series of earlier CEPR reports documented a substantial decline over the last three decades in the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy. This fall-off in job quality took place despite a large increase in the educational attainment and age of the workforce, as well as the productivity...