The Houston economy went from boom to bust to recovery during the 1980s. Expectations of oil prices at $50 per barrel and higher in the late 70s and early 80s stimulated hundreds of oil-related projects in the area. An oil-price decline, however, led the Houston economy into a sharp recession...

This paper analyzes the role of bank competition on the life-cycle dynamics of non-financial industries. Using multi-dimensional data sets, which contain information on job creation and destruction for establishments in U.S. manufacturing sectors operating in different geographical regions and...

In this article, Evan F. Koenig demonstrates that the Federal Reserve Board's initial estimate of manufacturing capacity utilization is helpful in predicting subsequent growth in manufacturing output. Together with lagged real-time output growth and growth in the composite index of leading...

Superseded by Working Paper 12-20 ; The authors study the rise in U.S. manufacturing exports from 1987 to 2002 through the lens of a monopolistically competitive model with heterogeneous producers and sunk costs of exporting. Using the model, they infer that iceberg costs fell nearly 27 percent...