Income inequality has increased in recent years, while economic mobility has decreased. Many factors contribute to mobility, but for most people advancement depends on opportunities to obtain human capital — opportunities that are not as good for children in poor families. Initiatives that...

Despite a large and growing earnings premium for college graduates, growth in college enrollment and especially college attainment in the United States has been quite slow. The labor market's apparent lack of responsiveness to the earnings premium may be driven in part by the risks that...

In recent decades, income inequality has increased. But this doesn't mean that those with lower incomes are relatively worse off.

In response to the financial crisis and recession of 2007-09, the federal government enacted a number of emergency fiscal policies intended to aid recovery. These included short-term stimulus measures, such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and temporary tax reductions, such...

Over several decades, the relative rise of consumer durables manufacturing and the relative decline of consumer nondurables manufacturing in the Fifth District may have hindered the region's ability to weather the recession of 2007-09. Decomposing the Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing...

Several recent research efforts have found that stimulative fiscal policy — government spending or tax cuts — can have unusual effects when nominal interest rates are as low as they are today. In particular, some studies have found that the government spending "multiplier" can be much larger...

Recessions associated with banking crises tend to differ from other recessions in that the weakness of the financial sector, particularly the limited supply of credit, encumbers the subsequent recovery. The recovery from the 2007-09 recession, compared to past recoveries from recessions...

The geographic clustering of companies within an industry is often attributed to several agglomeration economies: intra-industry spillovers (benefits from proximity to firms in the same industry), inter-industry spillovers (benefits from proximity to firms in related industries), and spinoffs...

The ratio of household debt to disposable personal income fell rapidly during the recession of 2007-09 as consumers defaulted on loans, paid down debt, and took out fewer loans. According to some economists, this household debt reduction — "deleveraging" — has constrained consumer spending,...