Remarks at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City.

Remarks at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City.

This paper examines the relationship between human capital and economic activity in U.S. metropolitan areas, extending the existing literature in two important ways. First, we utilize new data on metropolitan-area GDP to measure economic activity. Using educational attainment as an indicator of...

In this paper, we investigate the role of college selectivity in mobility decisions (both in-state and out-of-state) of freshmen students following Georgia’s HOPE scholarship program. How did HOPE affect the selectivity of colleges attended by Georgia’s freshmen students? Did it induce...

The number of people in a given state or region with a college education varies across the nation. States in the Third Federal Reserve District (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware) compare favorably with the nation on measures of college education and the three states as a whole are close to...

Immigrants have figured prominently in U.S. economic growth for decades, but the recent recession hit them hard. Immigrants’ labor market outcomes began deteriorating even before the recession was officially under way, largely as a result of the housing bust. An analysis of employment and...

Despite a large and growing earnings premium for college graduates, growth in college enrollment and especially college attainment in the United States has been quite slow. The labor market's apparent lack of responsiveness to the earnings premium may be driven in part by the risks that...

Remarks at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

The return on educational investments has risen substantially in the past 30 years. While the primary focus has been on the college wage premium, new evidence shows that the value of going to college is affected by a host of other important educational decisions, each of which has a potentially...