In the wake of the most recent U.S. recession, both New York State and New Jersey have faced multibillion-dollar budget gaps. An analysis of the makeup of their budgets reveals that the states' heavy reliance on personal income taxes - particularly from high-wage earners in the finance sector -...

Steindel's paper focuses on the interaction of tax and transfer programs and consumer spending. The issue has attracted increased attention in the United States as a result of simultaneity of the first US recession in a decade and of the 2001 tax cut. Steindel points out that while the US...

The paper by Steindel examines the impact on saving decisions of the expected future debt growth in the USA arising from the increase in pension and health spending. After having considered the long-term outlook of the main social programmes, pointing to the expected strains, the paper evaluates...

Gross domestic product's high correlation with unemployment and inflation makes it a key measure of the U.S. economy. Yet the somewhat arbitrary nature of the GDP construction process complicates interpretation and measurement of the indicator. A study of an alternative measure of GDP designed...

The scale of the recent collapse in asset values and the magnitude of the recession suggest that activities connected to the increase in values over the 2002-07 period - notably, expansion of the financial markets, homebuilding, and real estate - were overstated. If this is true, aggregate U.S....

The ability of central banks to differentiate between permanent and transitory price movements is critical for the conduct of monetary policy. The importance of gauging the persistence of price changes in a timely manner has led to the development of measures of underlying, or core, inflation...

Critics of the consumer price index - the most widely watched inflation measure - contend that it overstates inflation by as much as 1 percentage point a year. Some have argued that alternative indexes eliminate the CPI's upward bias and offer a more accurate reading of inflation levels. A...

This paper provides a review of the concept of core inflation and evaluates the performance of several proposed measures. We first consider the rationale of a central bank in setting its inflation goal in terms of a selected rate of consumer price growth and the use of a core inflation measure...

Many argue that the astonishing growth in Americans' stock portfolios in the 1990s has been a major force behind the growth of consumer spending. This article reviews the relationship between stock market movements and consumption. Using various econometric techniques and specifications, the...