Economic forecasters rely on monthly consumer confidence surveys to help them determine the current and future states of the economy. But how reliable are these surveys?

Some countries’ business cycles are in sync with the world’s, while other countries’ cycles follow the ups and downs just of their neighbors’. This regional connection is even more prevalent if a region is defined not by geography but by common cultures and institutions.

In measuring the returns to education, economists usually focus on the number of years of schooling. But many people would say that the quality of schooling matters, too, even at the high school level. Does the type of high school attended make a difference in future income?

Not only are more American families in debt, but the median value of the debt more than doubled between 1989 and 2004. Credit cards and payday loans are two of the favorite tools for digging the hole deeper.

Oil can be derived from oil sands and oil shale, but the job is both economically and environmentally costly. How high must the price of oil be in order to make these alternatives cost-effective?

Given that Americans still spend a considerable portion of their budget on gasoline (just under 4 percent in 2012), it’s important to understand why gas prices don’t always move in sync with oil prices. The latter are determined in a more-or-less centralized market, but the market for gas is...

Fifty years ago, Arthur Okun examined the relationship between output growth and the unemployment rate. The empirical relationship of the resulting “Okun’s law” has remained largely intact since then, including during the Great Recession. However, while the law does fit our intuition about...

The target set by the FOMC for the federal funds rate applies to the entire country. But that single policy has a different impact on different parts of the country, depending on their concentration of interest-sensitive industries.

Satisfying a need to get out in the field, some economists are studying sports. Their topics have included racism in the NBA, coaches' maximization of their chances of winning, and the direction that soccer players and goalies should move during penalty kicks.