The distribution of manufacturing employment across regions of the United States has changed tremendously over time. Shares of manufacturing employment in older, northern regions of the country have declined markedly relative to shares in the Sunbelt regions. But the shifting of manufacturing...

Research in recent years has documented extensively the fact that labor markets are characterized by large and pervasive flows of jobs among places of employment. However, virtually none of this research pertains to the role of the firm and its decisions in determining job creation and...

Poverty rates vary considerably over regions, as do the demographic characteristics of the poor, but why the extent of poverty varies as much as it does across different regions of the country is not fully understood. This is an unfortunate gap in our knowledge, since it is difficult to analyze...

Recent decades have seen a trend toward longer life expectancy and reduced birth rates across the globe. This is good news -- the pressures created by rapid population growth are being relaxed, and people are more likely to live to old age -- but it creates problems for programs such as Social...

According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, the United States will face dramatic demographic changes over the next one hundred years. The population is expected to grow more slowly but age more rapidly, with the share of the population over 65 climbing to a succession of new record highs....

The preceding article analyzed the determinants of investment at the macroeconomic level. In general, analysis of investment at this degree of aggregation implies that all firms in the economy react similarly to the same macro-level variables. Yet, examining macro data may obscure a great deal...

A remarkable feature of the current U.S. economic expansion has been its ability to shrug off the adverse effects of financial crises and economic slowdowns around the world for nearly two years. Recently, however, foreign-sector developments have triggered a sizable shift in the sectoral...

What makes economies rise and fall? What caused the Asian crisis, the recessions of the 1970's and 1980's, and even the Great Depression? According to many modern economists, shocks did. This unsatisfying answer lies at the heart of a currently popular framework for analyzing business cycle...

Despite a significant decline in the pace of economic growth in the second half of 2000, macroeconomic forecasters underpredicted real GDP growth and overpredicted the unemployment rate by a significant amount, for the fifth consecutive year. On average, real GDP forecasts were about 2...

The discussion briefly reviews the events leading up to the adoption of the European Monetary System in March 1979 and the associated Exchange Rate Mechanism. It goes on to describe the Maastricht Treaty and to review the costs and benefits of a common currency. The author also considers the...