The scale of the recent collapse in asset values and the magnitude of the recession suggest that activities connected to the increase in values over the 2002-07 period - notably, expansion of the financial markets, homebuilding, and real estate - were overstated. If this is true, aggregate U.S....

Economists, business analysts, and policymakers have all focused considerable attention on U.S. productivity growth in recent years. This paper presents a broad overview of productivity both labor and total factor and discusses why it is such an important topic. We begin with the official U.S....

This paper investigates the statistical properties of the U.S. sacrifice ratio--the cumulative output loss arising from a permanent reduction in inflation. We derive estimates of the sacrifice ratio from three structural VAR models and then conduct Monte Carlo simulations to analyze their...