The various regions of the United States, although linked, respond differently to changing economic circumstances. Traditional approaches to understanding these different reactions have relied on the assumption that long-run trends in regional income or employment are constant. Recently, many...

An equilibrium model is used to assess the quantitative importance of monetary policy for the post-1984 decline in U.S. inflation and output volatility. The principal finding is that monetary policy played a substantial role in reducing inflation volatility, but a small role in reducing real...

Using survey-based measures of future U.S. economic activity from the Livingston Survey and the Survey of Professional Forecasters, the authors study how changes in expectations, and their interaction with monetary policy, contribute to fluctuations in macroeconomic aggregates. They find that...

This study documents a general decline in the volatility of employment growth during the period 1956 to 2002 and examines its possible sources. The authors use a panel design that exploits the considerable state-level variation in volatility during the period. The roles of monetary policy, oil...

In the late 1990s, as tech-stock prices were surging, we often heard discussion about a "new economy" in which advanced communications technologies would lead to higher future productivity growth and greater economic efficiency. But the boom times largely came to a halt after August 2000, and in...

Using survey-based measures of future U.S. economic activity from the Livingston Survey and the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we study how changes in expectations, and their interaction with monetary policy, contribute to fluctuations in macroeconomic aggregates. We find that changes in...

Cyclical dynamics at the regional level are investigated using newly developed times-series techniques that allow a decomposition of aggregate data into common trends and common cycles. The authors apply the common-trend/common-cycle representation to per capita personal income for the eight BEA...

Interest rates change in response to a variety of economic events, such as changes in Fed policy, crises in financial markets, and changes in prospects for long-term economic growth and inflation. But such events are sporadic, and interest rates show a more regular pattern of volatility that...