esident Obama has released a sweeping plan to respond to the financial crisis and to insure that it is not repeated by altering and expanding the federal regulatory framework for financial services firms. The plan outlines detailed and demanding reporting deadlines for various existing federal...

The personal saving rate spiked up to an unusually high level in 2008 and spring 2009, prompting many observers to suggest that the financial crisis has created a new thrift ethic, reversing decades of decline in U.S. saving to near zero. The depth of the recent financial and economic crisis has...

Recent academic and popular discussions of budget deficits rely upon a simplistic and, in large part, false conception of their effects. The recent literature ignores the fact that deficit effects depend on their source and on private sector responses to them. It also matters whether budget...

In 1991, Congress passed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA). The Act provided for risk-based deposit insurance premiums, put explicit limits on the application of a “too big to fail” principle for banks and required that examiners implement “prompt...

A program sponsored by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation aims to increase the quantity and quality of available human resourcesby encouraging former residents to come back. Indiana’s population growth has been weak relative to the rest of the country. Over the next 25 years US...

China-bashing has become a popular media and political sport. This is largely due to the U.S. trade imbalance and the belief, by some, that China is responsible for it because it manipulates its currency to hold down the dollar prices of its goods, unfairly creating a trade advantage that has...

Requiring taxes to be paid in domestic money provides a legal tender basis for money demand and hence to the development of a financial system. In emerging markets, the level of taxation is a positive factor boosting financial development. At higher tax rates, however, taxation provides an...

A popular and highly politicized theme today is that US workers are falling behind as their real wages fall and income gets redistributed to the rich. This article looks at some reasons that income inequality could rise, and then explores whether, in fact, workers are losing out. It looks at the...

In late 2008 and early 2009, there has been a serious deterioration in the economic outlook of political leaders, the media and many economic analysts. Comparisons of recent performance and the outlook have degenerated into comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s, suggesting that the...

A popular and highly politicized theme today is that US workers are falling behind as their real wages fall and income gets redistributed to the rich. The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, led by Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Roger Altman, is dedicated to the study of this...