Increases in income tax progressivity generally entail some efficiency cost due to increased distortion of individuals' labor supply decisions. This paper quantifies the magnitude of the efficiency cost of several policies which would increase the progressivity of the U.S. individual income tax....

The authors present a picture of how the effects of international trade on employment in U.S. manufacturing industries vary widely. They explore the labor-market dynamics and adjustment costs associated with international factors, particularly the way fluctuations in exchange rates, overseas...

The United States's post-World War II emphasis on activist fiscal policy for short-term economic stabilization was called into question in the 1960s, and by the late 1980s was superseded by the view that fiscal policy should focus on long-run structural concerns. For the past two decades both...

A considerable literature examines the optimal decumulation of financial wealth in retirement. We extend this line of research to incorporate housing, which comprises the majority of most households’ non-pension wealth. ; We estimate the relationship between the returns on housing, stocks, and...

Most economic developments are hard to predict. Considerable uncertainty surrounds forecasts for output growth, inflation, and unemployment a year from now, for instance. But demographic developments are different in this respect. Although demographic surprises abound, the major trends build...

This paper extends the work of Dunne, Roberts, and Samuelson [3] and Davis, Haltiwanger, and Schuh [2] on gross job flows among manufacturing plants. Gross job creation, destruction, and reallocation have been shown to be important in understanding the birth, growth, and death of plants, and the...

This paper contributes to an understanding of internationally generated adjustment costs by demonstrating a statistically significant and economically relevant effect of the real exchange rate on job creation and job destruction in U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 1973 to 1993. The...

Poverty rates vary considerably over regions, as do the demographic characteristics of the poor, but why the extent of poverty varies as much as it does across different regions of the country is not fully understood. This is an unfortunate gap in our knowledge, since it is difficult to analyze...

Recent decades have seen a trend toward longer life expectancy and reduced birth rates across the globe. This is good news -- the pressures created by rapid population growth are being relaxed, and people are more likely to live to old age -- but it creates problems for programs such as Social...

According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, the United States will face dramatic demographic changes over the next one hundred years. The population is expected to grow more slowly but age more rapidly, with the share of the population over 65 climbing to a succession of new record highs....