Bridge collapses and water main explosions focus national attention on the crumbling condition of the nation’s infrastructure. Catastrophic infrastructure failures are always a momentary spur to debate on the nation’s capital investment policies. But increasingly these negative developments...

The rate of national saving declined sharply in the 1980s. Some of the explanations for this puzzling performance have considered the influence of capital gains, a reduction in the need for precautionary saving, a decline in the need for retirement saving, the effect of slower income growth, and...

Economists spent most of the 1980s trying to explain the decline in personal and national saving. They have supplied a host of possibilities, including the impact of capital gains, a decline in the need for retirement saving, and the impact of slower income growth, among others. None of these...

Why another study of Massachusetts state government? In the past year, two Commissions established by the Governor have submitted reports, nonprofit citizen groups have come forth with lists of suggested reforms, and the legislature has had its own proposals. The goal of the study described here...

Many politicians, gerontologists, and editorial writers have come to deplore the trend toward early retirement. This trend, which began after World War II and accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, has led to a dramatic decline in work effort and earnings among the elderly. Opponents of early...