Private for-profit institutions have been the fastest-growing part of the U.S. higher education sector. For-profit enrollment increased from 0.2 percent to 9.1 percent of total enrollment in degree-granting schools from 1970 to 2009, and for-profit institutions account for the majority of...

The authors trace the origins of the key features of U.S. higher education today--the coexistence of small liberal arts colleges and large research universities; the substantial share of enrollment in the public sector; and varying levels of support provided by the states. These features began...

Women are currently the majority of U.S. college students and of those receiving a bachelor's degree, but were 39 percent of undergraduates in 1960. We use three longitudinal data sets of high school graduates in 1957, 1972, and 1992 to understand the narrowing of the gender gap in college and...

Over the past three decades, much research has attempted to identify the determinants of the natural rate of unemployment. The authors reach two main conclusions about this body of work. First, there has been considerable theoretical progress over the past thirty years. A framework emerged that...

The rescue of the US automobile industry amid the 2008-2009 recession and financial crisis was a consequential, controversial, and difficult decision made at a fraught moment for the US economy. Both of us were involved in the decision process at the time, but since have moved back to academia....

The paper investigates whether there is a connection between poverty or low education and terrorism. We review evidence on hate crimes, which are closely related to terrorism; the occurrence of hate crimes is largely independent of economic conditions. We analyze data on support for attacks...

To commemorate the new millennium and 50 issues of JEP, we have commissioned a series of essays in three broad areas. The first set of papers in this issue look back at key developments in the economy and economic thinking. In a second group of articles, we asked for predictions about the future...

Direct reports of subjective well-being may have a useful role in the measurement of consumer preferences and social welfare, if they can be done in a credible way. Can well-being be measured by a subjective survey, even approximately? In this paper, we discuss research on how individuals'...

Alan Krueger and Timothy Taylor interviewed Zvi Griliches, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, at his home near the Harvard campus on June 21, 1999. The interview touches on his harrowing journey from Lithuania to Chicago; years at the University of Chicago; the move to...