This article explains the recent high levels of residential investment and rates of homeownership.

After a long period during which house prices were not affected by distance from Chicago's central business district, values now decline by more than 8 percent per mile. Annual appreciation rates in house prices are higher in neighborhoods close to the city center with large minority...

The rapid rise of real estate prices in recent years has led to fears of a housing price bubble. But, to determine whether there has been a bubble–and whether the bubble is bursting–one needs to know what home prices “should” be. The authors estimate a simple model of home prices and...

Quieter aircraft are causing the 65-db noise contour band around O'Hare Airport to shrink over time, even in the event that air traffic increases by nearly 60 percent after the proposed expansion of the airport. Forecasts imply that home prices will increase by nearly $280 million (in 1997...

This article reviews the competing explanations offered for the recession of 1937, which interrupted the recovery from the Great Depression. One explanation, increases in labor costs due to the New Deal's industrial policies, fails to account for the full extent of the downturn and for the...

This article documents the Great Trade Collapse of 2008–09, as well as the dramatic recovery in trade of 2009–10. The authors consider how three distinct policy actions — fiscal stimulus, funding for trade finance and a commitment to refrain from increasing trade barriers — might have...

This article shows how the recovery of inflation in 2009-10 occurred precisely at the only time (since 1985) the models would predict disinflation, i.e., inflation went up when the models said it should go down.

In 2009, Medicaid spent over $75 billion on 5.3 million elderly beneficiaries. This article describes the Medicaid rules for the elderly and discusses their economic implications.

The authors find that prolonged deployments overseas account for much of the difference in unemployment rates between recent veterans and nonveterans during the Great Recession.

There have been large increases in two-year, four-year public, and four-year private college enrollment since the start of the Great Recession—slightly larger than expected based on the historical relationships between unemployment and enrollment, and significantly larger than expected if the...