The author argues that, with proper adjustments, the conventional view about the rise in inequality has been exaggerated. Indeed, in recent periods, most of the inequality can be attributed to gains by a small proportion of very high-income individuals. He proposes a variety of aggressive...

This paper provides a retrospective on the 1996 Boskin Commission Report, Toward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living, and its famous estimate that the CPI in 1995-96 was upward biased by 1.1 percent per year. The paper summarizes the report's methods, findings, and recommendations, and...

This paper examines the macroeconomic aftermath of the 1992 breakdown of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The economic performance of six leaver' nations is compared with five stayer' nations that maintained a roughly fixed parity with the Deutsche Mark. Recent writing about...

This paper provides a new breakdown of past U.S. economic growth into its trend and cyclical components, using a mix of detrending methods. This decomposition is then used to interpret the extraordinary productivity performance of the U.S. economy since 1995 and especially since mid-2000. The...