Concerns are rising that the recent surge in home equity withdrawal has left consumers in a weakened financial position that will, over time, prompt a retrenchment in spending. However, a look at household assets and liabilities suggests that consumers have used the withdrawn funds to...

Real home prices have been rising strongly since the mid-1990s, and have continued to do so even as the economy has weakened. This has sparked the concern as to whether there is a bubble in the housing market, the collapse of which could harm the overall economy. Taking into account fundamentals...

A stylized fact in the growing literature on public sector labor markets is that estimates of public sector union wage premia are significantly lower than estimates of private sector union wage premia. In this paper I investigate the hypothesis that this difference may in part be due to the...

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the prudential supervision of bank holding companies (BHCs) on a consolidated basis. Prudential supervision involves monitoring and oversight to assess whether these firms are engaged in unsafe or unsound practices, as well as ensuring that firms are taking...

Studies continue to indicate that higher education is frequently a worthwhile investment for individuals and that it raises the productivity of the workforce as a whole. While the rising cost of post-secondary education has not eliminated this "college premium", it has raised new questions about...