Recent papers have questioned the accuracy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' methodology for measuring rent increases and changes in implicit rents for owner-occupied housing. We compare the BLS estimates of increases in rents and owner-occupied housing costs to regression-based estimates using...

Until the end of 1977, the method used in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) to measure rent inflation tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, this response bias biased...

The trade-off between risk and return in equity markets is well established. This paper examines the existence of the same trade-off in the single-family housing market. That market is dominated by homeowners, who constitute about two-thirds of U.S. households. For them the choice about how much...

The tradeoff between risk and return in equity markets is well established. This paper examines the existence of the same tradeoff in the single-family housing market. For home buyers, who constitute about two-thirds of U.S. households, the choice about how much housing and which house to buy is...

"What Test Scores Can and Cannot Tell Us about the Quality of Our Schools," by Ted Crone, recognizes that how to best judge the quality of our schools is a thorny issue. The No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law in January 2002, mandates standardized testing in math and reading for...

Do house prices reflect the quality of the local public schools? To what extent do school district policies determine how well students perform? How do such factors as neighborhood, family, and peers affect school quality and house prices? Ted Crone examines these questions, and others, to...

Several years ago, the Philadelphia Fed developed a small forecasting model for each of the three states in the Third Federal Reserve DistrictCPennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. This article introduces a similar model that forecasts major economic variables for the Philadelphia metropolitan...

In "The Changing Faces of the Third District: A Snapshot of the Region from the 2000 Census," Ted Crone describes some of these patterns and tells us what they mean for economic growth in this region.

Most discussions of business cycles focus on the national economy. But regional cycles are also important, and they can vary significantly from one region to another. Analysis of regional cycles can help businesses plan investments and project sales, among other things. A look at the economies...