The authors assess whether the sudden large losses in household wealth due to recent declines in stock and home values have significantly affected the U.S. labor market. They find that the overall labor force participation rate would be 0.7 percentage points lower were it not for the declines in...

This article shows that the elderly, especially those with high lifetime incomes, maintain large asset holdings to account for the possibility of their living a long time and facing high medical expenses.

On April 15–16, 2011, Northwestern University and the Chicago Fed co-sponsored a conference in honor of Dale Mortensen—a Northwestern University professor, Chicago Fed consultant, and co-recipient (along with Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides) of the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics,...

On November 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve unveiled a loan facility to revive the market for asset-backed securities, which had essentially stopped functioning due to the global financial crisis. What are these securities and why is it important for these markets to continue to operate?

This article finds that a federal minimum wage hike would boost the real income and spending of minimum wage households. The impact could be sufficient to offset increasing consumer prices and declining real spending by most non-minimum-wage households and, therefore, lead to an increase in...