During the last recession, credit flows suffered their worst slowdown since World War II. A look at selected credit market measures gives some insight into why the slowdown was so severe. The measures also show that in spite of the size of the shock, credit flows actually recovered extremely...

There has been much talk about a disappointing recovery in the wake of the Great Recession—that this time it is much slower. Comparing features of this recovery to past recoveries casts some doubt on that view. The comparison is made using a scaled-down version of the sophisticated and...

The past recession has hit the labor market especially hard, and economists are wondering whether some fundamentals of the market have changed because of that blow. Many are suggesting that the natural rate of long-term unemployment—the level of unemployment an economy can’t go below—has...