The scale of the recent collapse in asset values and the magnitude of the recession suggest that activities connected to the increase in values over the 2002-07 period--notably, expansion of the financial markets, homebuilding, and real estate--were overstated. If this is true, aggregate U.S....

The 1990s have seen astonishing growth in the stock market portfolios of Americans, which many have argued has been a major force behind the growth of consumer spending. This paper reviews the relationship between the stock market and the consumer. Using a variety of econometric techniques and...

Major U.S. economic data, most notably GDP and Industrial Production, are undergoing major changes. Proposals have been made for significant alterations in the CPI. The revision process has helped to spur debate on such topics as the proper method of accounting for high technology's role in the...

This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between corporate restructuring and productivity. We estimate neoclassical production functions and factor demand functions to analyze the importance of restructuring in improving resource allocation and productivity. We find, at most, restructuring...

This paper examines the relationship between capacity growth and the growth and composition of investment. Because capacity is an index of the maximum sustainable output of an industry, capacity growth is unlikely to be determined solely by the growth of an industry's fixed capital stock....

This paper provides a review of the concept of core inflation and evaluates the performance of several proposed measures. We first consider the rationale of a central bank in setting its inflation goal in terms of a selected rate of consumer price growth and the use of a core inflation measure...

Economists, business analysts, and policymakers have all focused considerable attention on U.S. productivity growth in recent years. This paper presents a broad overview of productivity--both labor and total factor--and discusses why it is such an important topic. We begin with the official U.S....