In 1987, Texas exported $25 billion worth of merchandise to foreign countries. Twenty-six percent, or $6.5 billion, of those exports went south to Mexico. By 1994, Texas merchandise exports to Mexico had grown to more than $18.5 billion per year (in 1987 constant dollars). Texas merchandise...

Despite Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, budgetary pressures in the United States make significant cuts in defense purchasing seem inevitable. Lori L. Taylor analyzes the employment consequences of cutting billions of dollars in defense purchasing. She finds that while certain industries and areas...

In this study, Nathan Balke and Mine Yucel ask whether the Eleventh Federal Reserve District's Beige Book description contains timely information about economic activity within the District. They examine whether the Beige Book description tracks current Texas real gross state product (GSP)...

Jason Saving explores the economic and political implications of "tough love" for redistributive policy. The American welfare system unquestionably helps support the least fortunate among us, but, in making poverty less onerous, it may discourage employment among some individuals. Traditional...

Illegal Mexico-U.S. migration has increased dramatically in recent decades. In this article, Pia Orrenius evaluates the causes of this migration and gives an overview of the enforcement and policy responses to date. Orrenius assesses the effectiveness of border enforcement by looking at...

In Part 1 of this two-part series, Evan Koenig explains why some economists are skeptical that staggered price adjustment can account for monetary policy's sustained effects on aggregate economic activity. In Part 2, Koenig looks at labor-market imperfections as a possible source of persistence....

In this article, John Duca discusses how and why compensation has become more market sensitive in the United States. Specifically, he illustrates how fiercer product market competition can theoretically reduce the prevalence of nominal wage contracts and of indexation in such contracts, while...

Frank Berger and Keith Phillips propose a new two-step method of seasonally adjusting state Current Employment Statistics (CES) data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This method, first proposed in the July/August 1993 issue of Southwest Economy, recently was adopted by the BLS...