We make four contributions in this paper. First, we provide a core of macroeconomic time series usable for systematic research on China. Second, we document, through various empirical methods, the robust findings about striking patterns of trend and cycle. Third, we build a theoretical model...

Specific quasi-rents build up in a wide variety of economic relationships, and are exposed to opportunism unless fully protected by contract. The recognition that such contracts are often incomplete has yielded major insights into the organization of microeconomic exchange. Rent appropriation,...

The development of the American economy was accompanied by significant spatial income inequalities between the northern and southern regions. While many factors contributed to northern industrialization and southern stagnation, an important factor was differences in their institutions. In the...

U.S. manufacturing firms that make sophisticated weapons systems for the Pentagon are subject to an unusual regulatory regime that obligates them to volunteer' information on their business practices to the government and to prime contractors as a condition of their special relationship with the...

This paper summarizes state balanced budget requirements, and the available empirical evidence on the effect of these rules on state fiscal policies. Existing state rules differ from many current proposals at the federal level. They are typically restricted to part of the state budget, they...

For more than a decade, the United States and Canada have been engaged in a rancorous dispute over trade in softwood lumber. Through three successive rounds of administrative litigation before the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. sawmill industry has sought to have countervailing duties...

Recent scholarship highlights the importance of institutions to the processes of economic growth, but the precise nature of their relationship bears further examination. This paper considers how the evolution of legal institutions has contributed to, and in turn been affected by, major...

This paper develops a new algorithm for detecting US recessions in real time. The algorithm constructs millions of recession classifiers by combining unemployment and vacancy data to reduce detection noise. Classifiers are then selected to avoid both false negatives (missed recessions) and false...

The COVID business cycle was unique. The recession was by far the deepest and shortest in the U.S. postwar record and the recovery was remarkably rapid. The cycle saw an unprecedented reallocation of employment and consumption away from in-person services towards goods that can be consumed at...

The Federal Reserve's dual mandate, to achieve maximum employment and stable prices, requires monitoring a broad range of indicators and carefully evaluating the trade-offs between these goals. We propose a flow-based framework to evaluate real-time shortfalls from maximum employment, focusing...