China has become the top FDI destination among all developing countries and remained host to the world's largest share of foreign direct investment receipts since its accession to the WTO in 2001. Given the impressive growth performance and FDI influx into China, the two globalized delta...

This paper studies racial and ethnic discrimination in discrete choices by real estate brokers using national audit data from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study. It uses a fixed effects logit model to estimate the probability that discrimination occurs and to study the causes of...

The distribution of unrestricted municipal aid has been a major policy concern in many states. Using Massachusetts as a case study, this paper examines the extent to which unrestricted municipal aid is responsive to the variation in the underlying fiscal health of municipalities. The paper uses...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has been collaborating with community leaders in Springfield, Massachusetts, on exploring revitalization strategies. Latino entrepreneurship is playing an important and increasing role in Springfield's economic development—providing new jobs and services and...

This essay considers whether housing policies may have contributed to the concentration of poverty in downtown Springfield, Massachusetts – a question that emerged in conversations with local leaders. Springfield is not alone in having large numbers of lower income households living downtown....

The objective of this paper is to analyze the efficiency consequences of monopoly from the perspective of an efficiency-wage model of unemployment based on Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). An important feature of our model is that a firm can raise the probability that a shirking worker is detected...

Local jurisdictions differ in the per capita costs that they must incur to provide a standard quality and quantity of municipal services at average efficiency. These cost differences are attributable to local social and economic characteristics or circumstances that are outside the control of...

This paper designs a new equalization-aid formula based on fiscal gaps of local communities. Using conceptual analysis and simulations with Massachusetts data, the authors illustrate the tradeoffs that policymakers face in deciding on the policy variables in the formula and lay out several...

This paper examines whether methodological deficiencies in the literature on discrimination in small business credit markets have a significant impact on the estimation of discrimination and provides a preliminary investigation into the causes of discrimination in these markets. We find...