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....

The current expansion has seen record-high levels of transactions in housing, extraordinary growth in the aggregate value of owner-occupied housing, and large increases in the amount of funds realized from the refinancing of mortgage debt. Many analysts thus have pointed to the strong housing...

The treatment of owner-occupied housing in the Consumer Price Index has long been a subject of confusion and consternation. Thus, a session to explore the issues was organized at the National Association for Business Economics Annual Meeting in Chicago on September 26, 2005.Business Economics...

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....