Search Results
Journal Article
The impact of reduced inflation estimates on real output and productivity growth
Despite posting their strongest sustained performance in many years, recent measures of output and productivity growth have still fallen short of their 1960-73 averages. Could data-measurement problems affecting the pricing of some services account for the inability of these widely tracked U.S. growth indexes to match their earlier rates?
Report
The relative importance of national and regional factors in the New York Metropolitan economy
This paper explores the connections between broad indicators of economic conditions in the New York Metropolitan area and their national counterparts. Our examination provides two different views of the metropolitan economy. First, as is well known, employment growth in the region over the last seven years has been very poor, both in absolute terms and relative to the nation, suggesting a region in decline. On the other hand, the region's income growth has been considerably better, suggesting a region whose goods and services remain in healthy demand. Some methods of analyzing the data ...
Report
Implications of the financial crisis for potential growth: past, present, and future
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. economic growth would have been overstated, implying that previous rates of potential gross domestic product (GDP) growth may also have been overstated and that the trajectory of potential GDP may be slower going forward. Slowing growth in the finance, homebuilding, and real estate sectors could hold ...
Report
Productivity: what is it and why do we care about it?
Economists, business analysts, and policymakers have all focused considerable attention on U.S. productivity growth in recent years. This paper presents a broad overview of productivity--both labor and total factor--and discusses why it is such an important topic. We begin with the official U.S. productivity statistics prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and discuss several stylized facts. We show how productivity relates to critically important variables like long-run growth, living standards, and inflation. We then describe the proximate factors that determine labor productivity ...
Report
Measuring economic activity and economic welfare: what are we missing?
Major U.S. economic data, most notably GDP and Industrial Production, are undergoing major changes. Proposals have been made for significant alterations in the CPI. The revision process has helped to spur debate on such topics as the proper method of accounting for high technology's role in the economy, the reported sluggishness of productivity growth in many service industries, and the overstatement of price increases for numerous products. This paper attempts to assess the potential impact of some of these problems on our understanding of basic trends in the economy. It is found that with ...
Journal Article
The recession's impact on the state budgets of New York and New Jersey
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--has exacerbated revenue shortfalls. To close their budget gaps, New York and New Jersey have had to make difficult choices about tax increases and service cuts. In the future, the states might take steps to avert such budget quandaries by establishing "rainy day" funds or restructuring taxes to make ...
Journal Article
A nation of spendthrifts? An analysis of trends in personal and gross saving
The steep drop in the U.S. personal saving rate over the last decade has fueled speculation that Americans are spending recklessly. But alternative measures of personal saving show that households are actually setting aside a larger share of their resources than the official figures suggest. In addition, government saving has risen markedly, leading to an increase in overall domestic saving that has helped finance a surge in U.S. investment.