A recent front-page article in the Wall Street Journal documented an increasing tendency among economists to move away from theories of efficient stock market valuation in favor of "behavioral" models that emphasize the role of irrational investors (see Hilsenrath 2004). The long-run rate of...

This Economic Letter reviews the current facts about the current account deficit and its determinants, and describes the channels through which it is affected by an increase in trend labor productivity growth.

This Economic Letter describes an array of financial instruments that are suitable for extracting expectations about monetary policy, compares their forecasting power, and discusses some technical considerations in using them to forecast monetary policy.