Because the health sector makes up a large share of the U.S. economy, widespread price changes for medical services can impact overall inflation significantly. Cuts to public health-care spending spill over directly and indirectly to private spending. A recent estimate suggests the full effect...

The 2006 health-care reform in Massachusetts relied heavily on the private insurance market. Recent evidence shows that the reform boosted payments to physicians from private insurers by 13% relative to other areas. This increase began immediately before the reform became law, suggesting that...

Medical-care expenditures have been rising rapidly and now represent almost one-fifth of all U.S. economic activity. An analysis of the privately insured health-care market from 2003 to 2007 indicates that higher prices for medical services contributed largely to nominal spending growth, but did...

Inflation as measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index is near historical low levels, below the Federal Reserve’s 2% longer-run goal. Another common inflation measure, the consumer price index, is also historically low, but remains closer to 2%. The recent gap between these...

The well-known Phillips curve suggests that future inflation depends on current and past inflation and a measure of economic slack or resource utilization. Using the unemployment gap to measure slack, a simple Phillips curve currently predicts that inflation will remain quite low through 2015....

The proliferation of ATMs and the pricing schemes that accompany them have attracted a great deal of attention from research economists, because they shed light on how banks compete against each other in the current environment. By studying the pattern of entry of ATMs in certain markets we can...

This Economic Letter describes one of the measures commonly used to gauge the fundamental value of housing—the price-rent ratio. We describe the kinds of forces that cause the ratio to move over time and document which forces appear to be most important. We document the way that the housing...

This Letter discusses the strong link between house price depreciation and defaults on loans for residential mortgages as well as for land development and construction.

As 2006 draws to a close, one economic development that stands out over the year is the slowdown in the housing sector. In particular, the slowdown raises concerns about the perceived shift households have made toward "alternative" mortgage products, which may leave them more exposed to negative...