According to several measures, the difference in wages between men and women, the so-called "male-female wage gap" (MFWG), has shrunk substantially--by about half--over the past several decades. This phenomenon has been the subject of much research, speculation, and contention. For example, some...

This Economic Letter focuses on productivity growth in one area of the economy: the retail trade industry. Although strong productivity growth is often associated with high-tech industries (such as semiconductor manufacturing), the retail sector has enjoyed above average productivity growth and...

This Economic Letter summarizes the papers presented at the conference “Financial Innovations and the Real Economy” held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco by the Bank’s Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity on November 16–17, 2006.

After being the quintessential darling of the nation's economy, the San Francisco Bay Area has been battered by the information technology (IT) downturn; nearly one in ten jobs in the Bay Area has disappeared since the peak of late 2000, and half of those were in the IT sector. This Economic...

For the last fifteen years or so, information technology (IT) has become an ever more important part of the U.S. economy. Looking back over the period, there can be little doubt that the growing use of IT contributed significantly to the economy's performance, especially in the latter half of...

This Economic Letter reports on new research by Doms and Morin (2004) that explores the question of how consumers form their impressions about the economy.

In this Economic Letter, we explore how the pace of and change in house-price appreciation can affect the incentives and opportunities for borrowers in a market to avoid delinquencies and foreclosures. For instance, with likely gains in home equity in markets where house prices have risen...

This Economic Letter summarizes several papers presented at the symposium "The Outlook for Future Productivity Growth" hosted November 14, 2008, by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity (CSIP). The papers are listed at the end and most...

After decades of relative stability, the rate of U.S. homeownership began to surge in the mid-1990s, rising from 64% in 1994 to a peak of 69% in 2004, near which it has hovered ever since; this translates into 12 million more homeowners over the period. Understanding the forces behind such trends...

With households' property debt surging, the use of adjustable-rate mortgages increasing, and interest rates rising, some observers have raised concerns about households' ability to service that debt. To gain a better idea of the distribution of property debt burdens and how it has changed over...