Resources
From peer-reviewed research to accessible policy briefs, explore the scholarship that’s shaping debates and driving change.
756 Results
Trump’s trade war with Canada grows increasingly costly as Section 338 tariffs harm both economies (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 22, 2026
President Donald Trump continues to escalate his administration’s perplexing trade spat with Canada through the expanded use of novel tariff powers in Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
What Work Does Generative AI Do? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 8, 2026
Since August 2024, our Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults ages 18 to 64, has tracked how many Americans use generative artificial intelligence (AI). The adoption…
By: Alexander Bick (opens in a new tab), Adam Blandin (opens in a new tab), David Deming (opens in a new tab), Tyler Schumacher (opens in a new tab)
What happens to U.S. workers without access to Unemployment Insurance amid economic downturns or disruptions related to AI? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 2, 2026
The adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace has led to predictions of U.S. labor market disruptions. In response, policymakers have increased attention on the fitness of the nation’s social…
By: Megan Rivera (opens in a new tab)
Economic research shows immigration is good for U.S. workers, the economy, and affordability (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 31, 2026
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, mass deportations and immigration restrictions were renewed as one of the political priorities of his second administration. Since then,…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Terms and conditions for generative AI users outline a new legal framework that puts U.S. consumers at risk (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 20, 2026
Generative AI, or genAI, is a form of artificial intelligence that produces content in response to prompts and includes large language model chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude.…
By: Chiara Chanoi (opens in a new tab)
New research shows how U.S. homeownership and the accumulation of housing wealth are linked to political participation (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 14, 2026
Persistent affordability pressures have driven up housing costs for millions of U.S. families in recent years. Home prices remain near record highs relative to incomes, mortgage rates and associated costs…
By: Carlos Fernando Avenancio-Leon (opens in a new tab)
Estimating AI exposure is useful for research but cannot yet tell policymakers the whole story of AI’s impact on the labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 7, 2026
Artificial intelligence has the potential to substantially change the nature and availability of work. To effectively manage the transitions this technology might bring to the U.S. economy, policymakers need information…
By: Chiara Chanoi (opens in a new tab)
Tracking new research on artificial intelligence and its impact on the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 5, 2026
Headlines often paint extreme and dissonant pictures of the future impact of AI on the U.S. economy and labor market, with workers themselves echoing the conflicting feelings of optimism and…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
The costs of the Trump administration’s tariffs diverge for countries and industries so far in 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 14, 2026
The first 4 months of 2026 saw continued seismic changes in U.S. trade policy. In late February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s use of the International…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Why Unemployment Insurance Alone Is Not Enough in the AI Era (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 8, 2026
Since the large language model ChatGPT was rolled out in November 2022, artificial intelligence has captured the public’s attention and generated myriad debates over the emerging technology’s potential impacts on…
By: Megan Rivera (opens in a new tab)
Streamlining applications to social programs unlocks more support for the U.S. families who need it most (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 7, 2026
Millions of low-income families in the United States tap into multiple social programs to help them meet their needs. A single household, for example, might rely on the Supplemental Nutrition…
By: Neil Cholli (opens in a new tab), Derek Wu (opens in a new tab)
Personal Income in the United States nudges up in May but is down 0.76 percent in the past 6 months (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 25, 2026
According to today’s release of Personal Income estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. household incomes have fallen 0.76 percent in the past 6 months, with month-to-month declines…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
U.S. income data for 2024 shows the top 10 percent accrued the highest share of income since 2000 (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 25, 2026
Today, Equitable Growth updated the U.S. Inequality Tracker through 2024 following the release of new data last week by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data show that the…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
U.S. workers will be hurt by immigration enforcement overreach (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 17, 2026
President Donald Trump last week signed the $70 billion Secure America Act, a budget reconciliation package that boosts funding for immigration and border enforcement agencies while imposing no limits on their authority.…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
U.S. workers need sectoral bargaining now more than ever (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 4, 2026
U.S. union membership and coverage rates have declined for decades, fueled in part by legal barriers to new organizing, including the limiting of collective bargaining to specific workplaces or employers and misclassifying certain groups of workers so they…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
The U.S. public is angry about economic conditions, and the middle class is losing ground. Are these trends connected? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 14, 2026
A random sample of recent headlines likely would yield two fairly common stories about the U.S. economy. One is that the public is angry about the economy and the other…
By: Michael Linden (opens in a new tab)
Is Taxing Wealth Possible? Practical? Desirable? Yes, if we’re smart about it (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 7, 2026
While the American economy has outperformed much of the industrialized world in recent years, there are good reasons to be deeply concerned about its long-term prospects. It is dogged by…
By: David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
Research shows unions dampen support for right-wing populism and help workers navigate technological transitions (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 1, 2026
On May 1, much of the world—though not the United States—celebrates International Workers Day to honor the social and economic contributions of workers and labor unions. The May Day holiday began in large part to mark…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Why the Iran war is bad for U.S. economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 23, 2026
The growth trajectory of the U.S. economy is highly dependent on its connections to the outside world through trade and investments, as well as foreign policy and geopolitical developments. That…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Research on climate change’s impact on U.S. workers underscores the benefits of workplace heat standards (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 22, 2026
This year’s Earth Day follows a record-breaking heat wave across much of the East Coast, which followed a record-breaking heat wave that took hold in much of the West and…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
The other two-tiered U.S. tax system: How pass-through businesses let the ultra-wealthy dodge federal taxes (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 15, 2026
Many Americans likely remember when the legendary value investor Warren Buffett drew attention to a glaring unfairness in the tax code by pointing out that he paid a lower effective…
By: David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
Tariff policies in 2025 increased input costs for key U.S. industries, threatening growth and investment (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 24, 2026
All tariffs are not created equal. Throughout U.S. history, policymakers have imposed import taxes for a variety of economic and ideological reasons, with varying impacts. Targeted tariffs have been effective…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Research-based perspectives on the connection between economic policy and rising support for authoritarian populism (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 19, 2026
In 2025, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth began to explore the evidence behind a link between the effects of economic policies and global support for authoritarian populist candidates for…
By: Melissa Grober-Morrow (opens in a new tab)
The unintended macroeconomic effects of U.S. climate policy uncertainty (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 17, 2026
Recent policy developments in the United States highlight just how quickly climate policies can change. In January 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would stop considering lives…
By: Diego Känzig (opens in a new tab)
New research examines the historical macroeconomic effects of tariffs and sheds light on current U.S. trade policies (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 4, 2026
U.S. policymakers have enacted tariffs for a variety of reasons over the course of the country’s history. Motivated by economic pressures to raise federal revenues or address balance-of-payment issues, or…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
The state of the U.S. economy one year into the second Trump administration (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 23, 2026
President Donald Trump will soon give his annual State of the Union speech before Congress, one year into his second term in the White House. Ahead of his remarks, now…
By: Michael Linden (opens in a new tab)
Can remote work attenuate mothers’ mobility constraints in the U.S. labor force? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 12, 2026
Women’s labor force participation increased dramatically over the course of the 20th century in the United States. Indeed, the labor force participation rate of women between the ages of 25…
By: Ilaria D’Angelis (opens in a new tab), Keren Horn (opens in a new tab)
Analyzing recent U.S. economic policies using Equitable Growth’s Inequality Tracker (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 22, 2026
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Inequality Tracker is a data visualization tool designed to help policymakers and economic analysts examine and analyze U.S. income and wealth inequality in the…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
U.S. businesses report that tariff policies will likely lead to price increases and labor market impacts in 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 15, 2026
As 2026 begins, U.S. manufacturers are contending with a varied and uncertain economic environment. Many are weighing growth driven by domestic investments in data centers and artificial intelligence against the…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Expanding eligibility for Unemployment Insurance helps low-income U.S. workers find better jobs (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 9, 2025
Unemployment Insurance serves as a critical income support program for U.S. workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. It is also a valuable tool to stabilize…
By: Casey McQuillan (opens in a new tab), Brendan Moore (opens in a new tab)
U.S. social insurance programs support workers and economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 2, 2025
Since coming to power in early 2025, Republican majorities in Congress have shifted resources away from the nation’s social insurance programs, most notably to offset the cost of H.R. 1,…
By: Megan Rivera (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth hosts Econ 101 virtual event on how U.S. social insurance programs boost economic mobility (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 1, 2025
Microsoft Copilot helped draft this event recap. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth recently hosted its latest Econ 101 briefing aimed at providing in-depth evidence for policymakers on how U.S.…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Uncertainty created by ever-changing tariff policies harms U.S. economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 20, 2025
The approaches to international trade taken by the first and now second Trump administrations have been an endless jumble of tariff negotiations and ever-changing policies. Since 2018, duties have been…
By: Nirupama Rao (opens in a new tab)
What impact is artificial intelligence having on the U.S. labor market and the nation’s economy? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 14, 2025
As new and groundbreaking technologies emerge, they can function as a blank canvas onto which people project both aspirations and anxieties. Artificial intelligence—despite its quick uptake in broader society and…
By: Megan Rivera (opens in a new tab)
Tariff costs impact industries with mostly White, male, and noncitizen workers (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 4, 2025
The U.S. economy is flying blind, with most economic-data publications paused indefinitely due to the shutdown of the federal government amid a general U.S. labor market slowdown and just as…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Risks escalate for U.S. retirement plans due to unregulated private credit funds and new rules opening them up to retirement savings accounts (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 29, 2025
When the privately owned auto parts manufacturer First Brands Group earlier this month began to be unable to service its $6.1 billion debt load, the financial press began to pick…
By: Lenore Palladino (opens in a new tab)
Workplace exposure to artificial intelligence is higher among U.S. workers with higher wages, depending on how AI is used (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 23, 2025
Recent advances using artificial intelligence in workplaces, particularly large language models such as Claude.ai and ChatGPT, are increasingly disrupting the U.S. labor market. The cognitive power of AI has the…
By: Chiara Chanoi (opens in a new tab), Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth supports scholars studying the economics of the energy transition (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 22, 2025
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today announced a new cohort of grantees. These nine scholars will study how the design and implementation of federal policy influences how businesses and…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Payment for schedule changes under Fair Workweek laws in three U.S. cities (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 16, 2025
Fair Workweek laws set new standards for scheduling U.S. workers in jobs and industries characterized by fluctuating and unpredictable work hours, such as jobs in retail and food service. A…
By: Susan Lambert (opens in a new tab), Julia Henly (opens in a new tab)
Rethinking U.S. economic mobility to study change within a generation (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 9, 2025
When most people think about intergenerational mobility, they often assume it unfolds gradually over long periods of time. Historical patterns have reinforced this perception, shaping a widespread belief that meaningful…
By: Raven Shaw (opens in a new tab)
The status of U.S. labor market data amid the government shutdown (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 3, 2025
The federal government ground to a halt earlier this week as Congress was unable to reach a bipartisan agreement on continuing funding after annual appropriations ran out at the end…
By: Christopher Bangert-Drowns (opens in a new tab), Michael Linden (opens in a new tab)
U.S. workers’ and managers’ experiences with Fair Workweek laws can inform enforcement and education (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 2, 2025
Fair Workweek laws are intended to set new standards for scheduling workers in jobs and industries characterized by fluctuating and unpredictable work hours, such as jobs in retail and food…
By: Susan Lambert (opens in a new tab), Julia Henly (opens in a new tab)
How Are Workers Experiencing Fair Workweek Laws? Evidence for policymakers and advocates (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 2, 2025
This factsheet, “How Are Workers Experiencing Fair Workweek Laws? Evidence for policymakers and advocates,” originally appeared on WorkRise at https://www.workrisenetwork.org/sites/default/files/2025-08/howareworkersexperiencingfairworkweeklaws.pdf. New laws that regulate employer scheduling practic…
By: Susan Lambert (opens in a new tab), Julia Henly (opens in a new tab)
Federal data is under attack, but data users can work together to preserve and democratize it (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 1, 2025
Staffing shortages, political interference, and a federal government shutdown are all disrupting the routine operations of the nonpartisan federal statistical agencies that reliably gather facts and publish data about the…
By: Peter Norlander (opens in a new tab)
Emergency paid leave during the COVID-19 pandemic offered essential protections for U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 23, 2025
When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the United States in early 2020, it didn’t just bring about a public health emergency. It also exposed a longstanding weakness in the U.S.…
By: Tanya Byker (opens in a new tab), Elena Patel (opens in a new tab), Kristin Smith (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth announces funding for research on the impact of AI on U.S. workers and competition (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 18, 2025
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today announced a new cohort of grantees studying how artificial intelligence and new technology can support workers and promote competition across the U.S. economy.…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Populist voters feel a sense of loss that is reshaping democracies around the world (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2025
Across Europe, populist parties—once relegated to the political fringe—are now mainstays of national politics. Some are even winning power in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Austria, and beyond. Whether left-wing or…
By: Justin Gest (opens in a new tab)
Threats to social status and support for far-right political parties (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2025
Once on the political fringes, far-right parties have become established actors in many democracies. The European Parliament election in 2024, for example, resulted in far-right parties receiving more than 20…
By: Tarik Abou-Chadi (opens in a new tab)
A place-based economic development strategy to foster rural U.S. prosperity (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2025
Whether one lives in a city of 2 million people or a town of 2,000, we all want to live in healthy and thriving communities, to have the chance to…
By: Gbenga Ajilore (opens in a new tab)
How U.S. tax policies have fueled right-wing populism (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2025
Among the many factors fueling support for right-wing populism in the United States is federal tax policies. The nation’s tax system confuses, frustrates, and angers many citizens in ways that…
By: Andrea Louise Campbell (opens in a new tab)
To restore democracy, end shareholder primacy at U.S. corporations and on Wall Street (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2025
Workers in the United States have no say over business decisions made in their workplaces by corporate America. Unions, of course, are important for workers’ ability to exercise power over…
By: Lenore Palladino (opens in a new tab)
Even health care, the strongest sector of the U.S. jobs market, cannot deliver the wages its workers deserve without unionization (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 10, 2025
The growth of jobs in the U.S. health care industry is the linchpin to a strong U.S. labor market in 2025 and beyond. Health care is one of only a…
By: Adam Dean (opens in a new tab), Jamie McCallum (opens in a new tab)
The Federal Reserve must maintain its independence for the U.S. economy to thrive (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 28, 2025
President Donald Trump is attempting to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve in that role. He probably lacks the legal authority to do…
By: Alan Blinder (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth awards funding to early career scholars studying the effects of economic inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 20, 2025
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth announced today that it has awarded funding to seven scholars seeking to better understand the effects of economic inequality in the United States and…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
The 10 worst policies for equitable economic growth in the 2025 budget reconciliation law (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 14, 2025
The 2025 budget reconciliation law that was enacted earlier this month is a sprawling piece of legislation, touching almost every corner of the federal budget and the U.S. economy. It…
By: David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
Republican reconciliation bill’s cuts to social programs will damage some congressional districts’ local economies (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 11, 2025
In a recent working paper, Equitable Growth grantee Robert Manduca of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor demonstrates that government transfers make sizable contributions to local economies in much of…
By: Chiara Chanoi (opens in a new tab)
Adoption of generative AI will have different effects across jobs in the U.S. logistics workforce (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 10, 2025
Generative artificial intelligence promises to profoundly reshape labor markets, much like previous automation waves did, but with clear differences. Unlike earlier technologies, such as computerization, which primarily automated routine administrative…
By: Christophe Combemale (opens in a new tab), Dustin Ferrone (opens in a new tab), Andrew Barber (opens in a new tab), Laurence Ales (opens in a new tab)
Americans informed about the distributional effects of Republicans’ tax and budget bill overwhelmingly oppose it (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 3, 2025
Republicans in the U.S. Senate recently passed a version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, championed by President Donald Trump. The House of Representatives passed an earlier version of…
By: Jacob Hacker (opens in a new tab), Patrick Sullivan (opens in a new tab)
Congressional Republicans’ budget bill is the most regressive in at least 40 years (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 25, 2025
The U.S. Congress is in the midst of debating a budget bill that would make massive changes to U.S. tax and spending policy over the course of the next decade…
By: Jacob Hacker (opens in a new tab), Patrick Sullivan (opens in a new tab)
Medicaid and SNAP cuts in congressional Republicans’ budget bill will negatively impact local economies (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 24, 2025
The budget reconciliation bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives proposes to make large cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other social programs to pay…
By: Robert Manduca (opens in a new tab)
Testimony by Michael Linden on “The Big Beautiful Betrayal—Working Folks Pay While The Mega Rich Profit” (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 17, 2025
Senator Kaine, Senator Murphy, and members of the Forum, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I’m going to make three key points. First, the Republican budget bill…
By: Michael Linden (opens in a new tab)
The ‘funny math’ of top U.S. tax rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 11, 2025
The current reconciliation bill now before Congress won’t correct for the low tax rates paid by the richest Americans Overview Calculating the effective tax rate of the richest Americans can…
By: Patrick Driessen (opens in a new tab), David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
The hidden trade-offs of nonwage job amenities for U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 10, 2025
When workers choose jobs with predictable schedules, safer conditions, or greater autonomy, they are often paying a price: lower wages. In some cases, these hidden trade-offs are considerable. Indeed, my…
By: Alex Bell (opens in a new tab)
U.S. labor market data reveal that different job characteristics contribute to the gender wage gap (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 5, 2025
In 2003, women in the United States earned on average approximately 80 percent as much as U.S. men did per hour. By 2024, the gender pay gap had grown to…
By: Chiara Chanoi (opens in a new tab)
A researcher’s guide to identifying policy-relevant research questions for the federal government (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 30, 2024
Social science researchers play an important role in the policymaking process. Researchers help policymakers at all levels of government to understand key trends and issues in the U.S. economy and…
By: Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (opens in a new tab)
Economic policy guides to reduce inequality for the 2020 U.S. election-year presidential and congressional transition (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 30, 2020
Change is coming to Washington, D.C. No matter who wins the presidential and congressional elections in 2020, a new set of economic policymakers will transition into government. They will come…
By: Corey Husak (opens in a new tab), David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
Scholars and advocates say racial disparities and worker power are key to the coronavirus recession and to long-term U.S. economic recovery (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 30, 2020
The coronavirus recession took root in a U.S. economy already characterized by profound economic and racial inequality, deeply inadequate public investment, and significant holes in support systems for families. At…
By: Shanteal Lake (opens in a new tab)
College football’s inequality dilemma amid the coronavirus recession (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 8, 2020
Before the coronavirus pandemic and the recession it caused, the economics of college sports, particularly college football, took a backseat to game-day coverage of tens of millions of fans spending…
By: Kate Bahn (opens in a new tab)
Labor Day: Labor standards and institutional support for collective action are essential for an equitable U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 4, 2020
The landmark U.S. labor laws enacted in the early to mid-20th century continue to represent the main legal structures governing employment relations in the United States. These laws were critical…
By: Kathryn Zickuhr (opens in a new tab), Carmen Sanchez Cumming (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth introduces book of innovative policy ideas for 2020 (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 18, 2020
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today is publishing a collection of 21 essays, with innovative, evidence-based, and concrete policy ideas to shape the 2020 policy debate. The essays, which…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Newly released U.S. poverty statistics show that recent economic growth is not broadly shared (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2019
The U.S. Census Bureau yesterday released the 2018 poverty rate alongside information on the 2018 median household income in the United States. The takeaway? Things are not improving that much.…
By: Alix Gould-Werth (opens in a new tab)
Perceived fiscal space and the case for automatic stabilizers (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 22, 2019
Why do policymakers around the world often place limits—often ill-advised ones—on their fiscal responses to financial crises? Do they act because of economic concerns about deficits and debt, or are…
By: David S. Mitchell (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth launches quarterly Working Paper Digest (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 17, 2019
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today launched a new quarterly newsletter, the Equitable Growth Working Paper Digest, dedicated to informing readers about several of the working papers we’ve released…
Congressional panel investigates the market power of the ‘Big Four’ online platforms (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 15, 2019
Representatives from the “Big Four” online platform companies—Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit—are scheduled to testify on July 16 before the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust…
By: Michael Kades (opens in a new tab)
Interactive: Comparing wages within and across demographic groups in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 9, 2019
This post originally published Aug. 23, 2016. It was updated July 9, 2019 to incorporate new data. Hourly wages among U.S. workers vary enormously by gender, race, and education level.…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab), Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab), John Schmitt (opens in a new tab), Will McGrew (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth comments to the Federal Trade Commission on the agency’s proposed competition hearings (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 20, 2018
This summer, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would hold a series of hearings throughout the fall and winter on “whether broad-based changes in the economy, evolving business practices, new…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: June 2018 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 6, 2018
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of June. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab), Kate Bahn (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: March 2018 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 6, 2018
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of March. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
McDonald’s, monopsony, and the need for joint employer standards (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 5, 2018
McDonald’s Corp. is involved in a case with the National Labor Relations Board regarding the company’s responsibility under the so-called joint employer standard for the firing of workers at their…
By: Kate Bahn (opens in a new tab)
The effects of wealth taxation on wealth accumulation and wealth inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 2, 2018
Recent research documenting an increase in wealth inequality since the 1980s has led to calls for the increased taxation of wealth, including a high-profile proposal from Thomas Piketty, the Paris…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Stable work hours for U.S. workers are a hidden source of profits (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 29, 2018
For many part-time and low-wage workers in the U.S. retail and hospitality industries, constantly shifting schedules or requirements to be “on call” are increasingly the norm. Aided by computer scheduling…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The flat Phillips Curve and U.S. labor’s share of income (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 27, 2018
How flat is the Phillips Curve—the relationship between unemployment and inflation? This question is very much on the minds of U.S. central bankers because over the past several years the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
New research on the relationship between race, place, and opportunity in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 20, 2018
Stanford economist and Equitable Growth Steering Committee Member Raj Chetty and fellow researchers Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter released a new research paper yesterday, titled “Race…
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: January 2018 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 16, 2018
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Mothers in the United States earn less despite education and experience (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 13, 2018
It’s no secret that all women are disadvantaged in the U.S. labor market, but mothers face an additional handicap: the “motherhood wage penalty.” This penalty is one of the biggest…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: February 2018 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 9, 2018
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of February. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
What would lead to monetary overshooting by the Fed? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 6, 2018
After years of dormancy, inflation in the U.S. economy just might be heading upward. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation-the personal consumption expenditures price index-is still growing below the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
For families, concern is not enough (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 2, 2018
What is this administration doing or proposing for actual American families? And does the research on the challenges they face back these ideas or an alternative path?
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Understanding the importance of household credit in high-income economies (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 28, 2018
In the wake of the Great Recession, it was clear that policymakers and economists alike needed to pay more attention to household debt. The dramatic rise in household debt prior…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Credit card competition case before U.S. Supreme Court leaves consumers and competition in the balance (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 22, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court next week will hear oral arguments in Ohio v. American Express, an antitrust case involving competition in the credit card industry. The U.S. Department of Justice…
By: Michael Kades (opens in a new tab)
How income inequality may affect U.S. interest rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 19, 2018
Long-term U.S. interest rates have been rising this year, with the yield on a 10-year Treasury bond increasing about half a percentage point since the beginning of the year. The…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How the rise of market power in the United States may explain some macroeconomic puzzles (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 12, 2018
The U.S. macroeconomic data of the past 40 years have produced a number of surprising, and indeed puzzling, facts about economic growth and rising income and wealth inequality. Five of…
By: Jacob Robbins (opens in a new tab)
How does unconditional cash affect the labor market? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 8, 2018
If I handed you a check for $2,000 and told you a similar check would come your way every year with no strings attached, how would this change your life?…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: December 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 6, 2018
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: January 2018 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 2, 2018
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of January. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Firms matter: Where you work is important to what you earn (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 1, 2018
Decades of research show that workers who involuntarily lose their jobs suffer long and enduring reduced earnings. Recent evidence on the effects of job loss in the aftermath of recessions…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Dinner table entrepreneurship on both sides of the Atlantic (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 19, 2018
Want to own a successful business? Then you might want to listen to the wise words of your parent—if they own their own business, that is. New research by Hans…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Can the financial benefit of lobbying be quantified? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 16, 2018
In a new working paper for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Working Paper series, Equitable Growth grantee Daniel Carpenter and his co-author Brian Libgober at Harvard University seek to…
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
The opioid crisis: A consequence of U.S. economic decline? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 11, 2018
The opioid epidemic continues to devastate families and communities across the United States, causing serious health and socioeconomic crises. The high prescription rate for opioids and the subsequent misuse of…
By: Iris Marechal (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: November 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 9, 2018
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: December 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 5, 2018
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of December. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Heather Boushey: SiriusXM Radio interview about economic inequality and the new tax law (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 28, 2017
On December 20, Equitable Growth Executive Director and Chief Economist Heather Boushey appeared on the Dean Obeidallah Show on SiriusXM Radio. Listen for a lively and informative discussion of economic…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
The 10 most popular Value Added posts of 2017 (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 28, 2017
With the end of 2017 approaching, let’s take a look back at the 10 most popular Value Added posts this year: Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve?…
Heather Boushey: “The tax bill should’ve been called The Inequality Exacerbation Act” (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 22, 2017
“The permanent corporate tax cuts and other cuts benefiting the wealthy, combined with only short-term benefits for the middle class and measures that increase the cost of health insurance for…
By: Barry Toiv (opens in a new tab)
New worldwide report on inequality shows how the United States compares (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 15, 2017
Academics from the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley on Thursday debuted the first annual World Inequality Report. This report, part of the WID.world project, includes…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
The unequal economic consequences of bad health (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 13, 2017
Many studies over the past several decades document the inverse relationship between the socioeconomic status of people around the world and their health. Some of these experts argue that health…
By: Iris Marechal (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: October 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 11, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
New data on the changing U.S. occupational structure (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 5, 2017
During the post-industrial period, there have been rapid changes in the composition and substance of U.S. jobs. Technological change, globalization, and other factors have changed the nature of work over…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Ten years after the beginning of the Great Recession, is it time to abandon the natural rate hypothesis? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 1, 2017
How far into the future will the aftershocks of the Great Recession be felt? According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession began in December 2007, meaning…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. corporate tax cuts and wage growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 30, 2017
The U.S. Senate this week may well pass a large cut in the U.S. corporate tax rate. Supporters argue that reducing the rate to 20 percent from 35 percent will…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Unlocking the promise of antitrust enforcement (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 29, 2017
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth last month co-hosted an event with the Program on Law and Government at the Washington College of Law, called “Unlocking the Promise of Antitrust…
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
Tax legislation is no place for paid family leave (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 20, 2017
It’s no secret that the United States is the only developed nation that does not have any legal right for employees to take paid leave. Given the urgency of the…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Medicaid’s financial benefits are larger than previously thought (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 15, 2017
Given the costs associated with out-of-pocket health expenses across the United States, it’s no surprise that Medicaid can have a significant impact on the financial health of American families. But…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What does the research show about the need for fair work scheduling legislation in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 14, 2017
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) today is hosting a press conference with workers and advocates for fair scheduling practices to highlight her legislation, the Schedules That Work Act. Sen. Elizabeth Warren…
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
The blueprint for a perpetual wealth machine for the very richest U.S. families (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 9, 2017
Death and taxes are supposed to be certainties in life, but if a proposed change to the U.S. tax code becomes law, then one of them will fall by the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: September 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 7, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: October 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 3, 2017
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of October. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Policy rules and central bank independence (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 31, 2017
When explaining the need for central bank independence, economists and central bankers often turn to the metaphor of Odysseus and the Sirens. In order to hear the song of the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The gender gap in economics has ramifications far beyond the ivory tower (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 30, 2017
It’s no secret that the economics profession has a problem with women. In the wake of the publication of a University of California, Berkeley undergraduate’s senior thesis on sexism in…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Here’s why you should interpret tomorrow’s GDP growth estimate skeptically (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 26, 2017
Tomorrow morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will announce its first estimate for third quarter gross domestic product growth in 2017. A lot of time and energy will be spent…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Do Americans think we should tax wealth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 17, 2017
The United States relies heavily on property taxes to finance state and local government spending, but unlike five other OECD nations, it has no recurring tax on total wealth, which…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: August 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 11, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The forces behind the highly unequal U.S. wealth distribution (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 10, 2017
The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances release last week reported that 38.6 percent of wealth in the United States was owned by the top 1 percent of families in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Old companies may be slowing down the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 4, 2017
Though Stevie Nicks didn’t sing about them, firms are getting older too. The age of companies is rising in the United States, just as the rate at which Americans are…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
More U.S. men are becoming nurses but not entering other traditionally female occupations (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 3, 2017
As U.S. manufacturing jobs have waned, and the service and health care sectors have flourished over the past few decades, a growing number of men are leaving behind traditional factory…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
An update on the state of wealth inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 28, 2017
The Federal Reserve yesterday released the 2016 version of its triennial Survey of Consumer Finances. The SCF reports data on income, assets, and debts for families in the United States.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Income inequality and economic mobility remain defined largely by race and ethnicity in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 26, 2017
Last week, the Congressional Black Caucus held its Annual Legislative Conference, which is intended to discuss those policy issues affecting the black community. The need for a conference of this…
By: Jessica Fulton (opens in a new tab)
Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit is worth exploring in the U.S. tax reform debate (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 21, 2017
In recent years, lawmakers on both sides of the congressional aisle have proposed expanding refundable tax credits for low-income workers across the United States such as the Earned Income Tax…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
New federal antitrust legislation recognizes U.S. workers are not only consumers (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 20, 2017
The introduction of two new antitrust bills by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, last week indicates that Democrats are serious about making antitrust enforcement a central plank in their economic policy…
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
Another lesson from the 1930s for the Federal Reserve (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 19, 2017
The disoriented series of economic events over the past decade may seem unprecedented, but there are very few new things under the macroeconomic sun. Not even the upcoming unwinding of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Markups, macroeconomics, and the changing U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 14, 2017
Over the past several decades, the U.S. economy experienced changes in key economic metrics that don’t bode well for the welfare of most people. The labor share of income is…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: July 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 12, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Previewing tomorrow’s annual income and poverty report (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 11, 2017
The U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report, “Income and Poverty in the United States,” on Tuesday this week. The report summarizes results from the March edition of the…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
New report on evidence-based policymaking boasts recommendations that Congress must take seriously (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 7, 2017
The bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking released its final report today, advocating for a number of sound changes to the way the federal government collects, manages, and makes…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Pay transparency is good for employees but can also benefit businesses (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 6, 2017
The Trump administration announced this past week that it is halting the implementation of an Obama-era rule that would have required U.S. employers with 100 or more employees to report…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
When the next recession hits, how will fiscal stimulus affect government debt sustainability? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 31, 2017
There’s a strain of thinking that argues any options for fighting the next recession are bound by the response to the past recession and other previous policy decisions. Take, for…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How would homebuyers respond to a less generous U.S. mortgage interest deduction? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 30, 2017
What would happen to U.S. homeownership rates, home sizes, and borrowing levels if tax reform reduces the generosity of the home mortgage interest deduction? A recent working paper examining the…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
No one measure of inequality tells the whole story–income, wealth, and consumption should be considered together (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 29, 2017
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, releases the results of its annual Consumer Expenditure Survey, or CEX, today. This survey asks people to report their spending in dozens of…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Preferential pass-through tax rates and the declining share of labor income in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 10, 2017
A new working paper underscores the importance of pass-through businesses, S corporations, and partnerships.
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
The importance of equitable growth for future mobility in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 10, 2017
A recent paper looks at the likelihood that a child would earn the same amount of money or more than their parents at the same age.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Disclosing salary history perpetuates past discrimination (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 9, 2017
A growing number of states and cities are passing legislation banning employers from asking about salary history during the job application process.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: June 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 8, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Measuring potential GDP in the United States, and the case for emphasizing demand in monetary policy (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 7, 2017
A recent study casts some doubts about the decline in estimates of potential gross domestic product in recent years.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A glance at pay inequities for African American women’s Equal Pay Day (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 31, 2017
Today marks African American women’s Equal Pay Day, which represents the day that black women must work to in 2017 to make the same amount of money that men (of…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Understanding the importance of antitrust policy for U.S. economic competitiveness and consumer choice (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 31, 2017
A new Equitable Growth paper documents the rise in industry concentration and examines the evidence for one possible explanation: the change in merger enforcement policy.
By: Liz Hipple (opens in a new tab)
Must-Read: Washington Center for Equitable Growth announces fourth round of annual grantmaking, bringing total awards to nearly $3 million (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 29, 2017
Must-Read: Equitable Growth announces new slate of grantees The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is excited to announce its 2017 class of grantees. Equitable Growth’s fourth slate of grant awards…
Has the momentum around paid leave reached a tipping point in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 27, 2017
Existing state policies show that paid family leave based on a social insurance model can provide a critical benefit for everyone in the U.S. workforce.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Will the United States give up on data collection? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 26, 2017
The federal statistical agencies that collect important data are being threatened by insufficient funding proposals.
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Recessions, recoveries, and racial employment gaps in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 19, 2017
A recent paper looks at what might explain the differences in unemployment broken down by race and gender.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is declining competition causing slow U.S. business investment growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 18, 2017
A new paper looks for evidence of a causal relationship between competition and investment.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are economic boom-and-bust cycles stronger when capital is more available? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 12, 2017
A new Equitable Growth working paper illustrates the potential downsides for an economy when credit growth jumps upward.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: May 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 11, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equity, efficiency and education spending in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 27, 2017
Many studies of the long-term effects of pre-kindergarten programs in the United States find that they improve outcomes for those pre-K kids later in life, yet the effects on educational…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 21, 2017
Looking at the numbers, there’s some reason to be skeptical of the Federal Reserve’s implicit Philips curve.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The unfortunate power of stereotypes (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 19, 2017
A new working paper finds that some judges make faulty decisions due to a systemic lack of accurate information based on racial stereotypes that drive bail decisions.
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Conservation easements and tax policies in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 15, 2017
Conservation easements are an illustrative example of the inequities inherent in the federal tax deduction for charitable contributions.
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
A research roundup on unpredictable schedules in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 14, 2017
Unpredictable scheduling practices have negative economic ramifications for workers and their families, businesses, and the broader economy.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Time for the Fed to look beyond 2 percent target inflation? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 13, 2017
The Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation target might have been the right target at a certain point in time, but it looks like its time has passed.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 12, 2017
Recent research finds that merely making it more difficult to apply for disability insurance pushes away the people who need help the most.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: April 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 6, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Monetary policy via income redistribution (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 5, 2017
Traditionally, central bankers haven’t considered income and wealth inequality much when they conduct monetary policy. Perhaps some of them think about the impact of monetary policy on the levels of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Venture capital’s gender gap is costly for firms and the economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 1, 2017
A new study uncovers a surprising performance enhancer for venture capital funds: hiring partners who have daughters. A recent study by business professor Paul A. Gompers and doctorate student Sophie…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What unconventional policies are likely to stay in central bankers’ toolkits? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 30, 2017
According to a recent paper from four economists, monetary policy innovations of the financial crisis era are likely to remain in central bankers’ toolkits.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Trump administration 2018 budget swaps heavy cuts to education for focus on school choice (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 25, 2017
President Donald Trump’s budget for fiscal year 2018 beginning October 1 and released this past Tuesday contains some potentially bad news for the state of education in the United States.…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Why enforcing U.S. labor standards may be more important than ever (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 24, 2017
These four fundamental characteristics of our labor market come together to make effective, strategic enforcement of labor protections more important than ever before.
By: Elisabeth Jacobs (opens in a new tab)
U.S. over-education and underemployment over the course of a lifetime (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 23, 2017
New research for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth shows that underemployment may be more prevalent for older workers than young workers.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Just how big does the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet need to be? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 18, 2017
For the past couple of years, the big question in U.S. monetary policy has been when the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates. After raising short-term rates 0.25 percentage…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A reminder on the current size of the gig economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 17, 2017
In a piece for a recent issue of The New Yorker, Nathan Heller reviews the impact of the gig economy in the United States. Heller looks at how the growth…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Home is where the government subsidy is (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 16, 2017
In a piece in The New York Times Magazine, Harvard University sociologist Matthew Desmond outlines how U.S. government policy toward housing has become a source of inequality rather than a…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Climbing the career ladder, switching jobs, and the gender wage gap in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 15, 2017
Want to earn more? That means you need to get a raise or promotion at your current job, or go out and find a new one with that same end…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
How the opening to China may have partially fueled the U.S. housing bubble (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 11, 2017
The U.S. housing bubble burst more than 10 years ago, but the exact reasons for its inflation are still under debate. Consider the timing of the bubble (roughly 2002 to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Better understanding the importance of diversity in U.S. preschool programs (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 10, 2017
There’s a general consensus that early childhood education programs are a worthwhile investment in the United States for participants, their families, and the public at large. By nurturing both cognitive…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: March 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 9, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Changes in U.S. lifetime income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 8, 2017
New research shows the significant decline in lifetime income growth for most men in the United States over the past six decades and provides some evidence that the gains for…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: April 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 5, 2017
Earlier this morning, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of April. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
Some very worrying trends in U.S. lifetime income growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 4, 2017
Most measures of income—and therefore income inequality—are snapshots in time. They look at one year and treat everyone who earned the same amount of money in that year as similar.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s going to reduce U.S. corporate savings? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 3, 2017
Apple, Inc. has quite a bit of cash on its hands. The company has around a quarter of a trillion dollars in savings these days, with about 90 percent stashed…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Should policymakers worry about the level of debt or the pace of credit growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 1, 2017
Concern that a buildup in debt around the globe is going to cause some problems for financial and economic stability isn’t controversial. The bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How gig economy companies fit (or don’t fit) into the tax system (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 27, 2017
In any major U.S. city today, hailing a ride straight from a cell phone, booking a short-term stay in a complete stranger’s house for vacation, or even soliciting help through…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
The student loan crisis is fueled by a weak labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 26, 2017
The student debt crisis in the United States continues to escalate. Over the past 17 years, the outstanding student loan balance has nearly quadrupled, reaching $1.4 trillion, and between 2000…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Macro-prudential financial regulations versus capital controls (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 25, 2017
A recent speech by the Bank of International Settlements’ head of research, Hyun Song Shin, could not be more timely. Shin argues that a recent re-evaluation of capital controls on…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of unemployment benefits for protecting against income drops (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 25, 2017
During the worst part of the Great Recession, virtually every segment of the U.S. economy was adversely affected. Employment losses were severe and unevenly distributed, making many likely to be…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
What would rules-based monetary policy look like? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 20, 2017
Governments in the leading economies of the world, including the United States, have given their central banks operational control of monetary policy over the past several decades. These seemingly more…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A few graphs for Tax Day 2017 (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 18, 2017
If you haven’t filed your federal taxes yet, here’s a reminder that today is Tax Day. As tax-filing season (at least for those who haven’t gotten an extension) comes to…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
U.S. income inequality trends in the 21st century (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 17, 2017
How much has income inequality risen in the United States? Well, how do you define income? And what time period are you looking at? The most well-known statistics about income…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A new way to look at how U.S. firms affect their workers’ pay now and in the future (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 12, 2017
Economists and other social scientists have spent years focused almost solely on changes in the attributes of workers in their efforts to understand rising inequality in the United States, examining…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: February 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 11, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How corporate profit-shifting distorts the measurement of U.S. productivity (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 10, 2017
The various ways in which companies reduce their tax bills can do some weird things to economic statistics. One startling case in point: The economies of the world appear to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: March 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 7, 2017
Earlier this morning, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of March. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Evidence of ongoing gender discrimination in the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 6, 2017
In his 1957 book, The Economics of Discrimination, the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker argued that well-functioning markets work inexorably to eliminate racial, and other forms of, discrimination. By…
By: John Schmitt (opens in a new tab)
Time for an inflation rethink? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 5, 2017
Has the time come for central bankers to rethink their policy goals for inflation? In the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, David Harrison writes that just such a reconsideration…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Remembering who pays Uncle Sam this year’s Tax Day (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 4, 2017
With April 15 falling on a Saturday this year, Tax Day is on Tuesday, April 18. While it may not be everyone’s idea of a good time to finalize last-minute…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Do U.S. women choose low-paid occupations, or do low-paid occupations choose them? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 3, 2017
Tomorrow is Equal Pay Day, a “holiday” in the United States that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men did the previous year. Today,…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Despite increases, diversity still comes up short in U.S. venture capital (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 3, 2017
Business leaders and organizations in the United States have lauded the impact of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on companies’ bottom lines. From the acknowledgement by Forbes that a diverse…
By: Gabriel Matthews (opens in a new tab)
The once and future measurement of economic inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 30, 2017
A slew of research into economic inequality replete with serious looking graphs may give the impression that measuring inequality in the United States is a solved problem. This is misleading.…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab)
Another take on declining productivity growth in high-income countries (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 28, 2017
By now, the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States and other high-income countries is a well-known and much lamented trend. A slightly less appreciated aspect of productivity growth…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Look to the 49th state for basic-income guidance (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 27, 2017
What do Finland, the province of Ontario, the Italian city of Livorno, the African nations of Kenya, Namibia, and Uganda, the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, and the 49th state…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
What kind of fiscal policy works best at the zero lower bound? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 23, 2017
When central banks can no longer push down short-term interest rates, what are macroeconomic policymakers to do? Policymakers and researchers had a wide-ranging debate about the kinds of unconventional monetary…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is an even larger pass-through business tax loophole destined to become part of the U.S. tax code? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 22, 2017
Current conversations among academics and policymakers about corporate tax reform in the United States largely focus on the controversial border adjustment tax, projected revenue losses, and the distributional impacts of…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
How life experiences affect the views of U.S. monetary policymakers (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 21, 2017
The minutes of meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee are full of considerations of the latest economic data and deliberations about economic models. Data are parsed and the stability…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does Supplemental Security Income inhibit success? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 20, 2017
It’s been nearly 21 years since the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—commonly known as welfare reform—was passed. Most of the debate about the legacy of the bill…
By: Dionna Cheatham (opens in a new tab), Gabriel Matthews (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: January 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 16, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Changing sources of inflationary pressures in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 15, 2017
What drives inflation in the United States today is a $19 trillion question. The Federal Open Markets Committee is wrapping up its March meeting and is almost certain to announce…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A potentially new and rising concern: inflation inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 14, 2017
The rich are different from you and me. They have different consumption baskets. At least that is the tentative conclusion that some scholars are making in their recent research on…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does targeted or universal pre-Kindergarten better serve low-income kids? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 13, 2017
Investing in early childhood education is a research-backed, cost-effective strategy for boosting long-term U.S. economic growth. For instance, economics Nobel Laureate James Heckman’s analyses of two comprehensive early childhood programs…
By: Elisabeth Jacobs (opens in a new tab)
College may not be the great equalizer across race and ethnicity (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 13, 2017
There’s a common perception that college is the great equalizer in the United States, a pathway to leveling the playing field between students from different socioeconomic groups. But the jury’s…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: February 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 10, 2017
Earlier this morning, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of February. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
The connection between U.S. unemployment and rising opioid abuse (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 7, 2017
Opioid abuse, or more accurately the upsurge in opioid abuse, is a headline-grabbing concern for many policymakers, who alongside a number of researchers are wading through the causes and implications…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A childcare plan for wealthy families in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 6, 2017
The vast majority of children up and down the income scale grow up in dual-earner or single-parent homes. Without a parent who is able to care for children at home,…
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Thinking about levels when it comes to macroeconomic policy targets (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 2, 2017
In a piece last week at The New York Times’s the Upshot, Neil Irwin highlighted probably the biggest question for the U.S. economy in 2017: How far is it from…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Sustaining preschool gains can help the benefits of early childhood education endure (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 1, 2017
In order to counter the “fade-out” of early childhood education’s benefits, research and policymakers need to think more about sustaining its gains.
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Declining business dynamism and illusive allocative efficiency (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 28, 2017
New research suggests that fewer U.S. companies are being started and workers are less likely to switch jobs, which could hurt productivity.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Local economic decline affects marriage and fertility rates, but in a surprising way (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 27, 2017
Traditional marriage patterns are more common in areas where men’s economic status remains superior to women’s, but less so where men’s jobs have taken the largest hit.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What’s the problem a U.S. corporate tax cut will solve? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 23, 2017
Given previous tax reform efforts and trends among corporations, policymakers should be skeptical that the new House tax reform proposal will do much to spur economic growth.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The U.S. minimum wage improves access to traditional lines of credit (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 22, 2017
Economists have studied the employment effects of the minimum wage for more than a century. A fair reading of the full body of research suggests that increases in the minimum…
By: John Schmitt (opens in a new tab)
Why is collective bargaining so difficult in the United States compared to its international peers? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 22, 2017
In many countries, there are striking differences between union coverage and density rates.
By: Matt Markezich (opens in a new tab)
Are shocks to U.S. firm performance transmitted to their workers? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 16, 2017
A new paper investigates whether changes in market demand faced by employers creates volatility in workers’ earnings.
By: Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Can women’s “sagging middle” help explain the fall in U.S. labor force participation rates? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 16, 2017
A new paper finds that a substantial share of women exit the labor force in their mid-30s through their mid-40s.
By: Elisabeth Jacobs (opens in a new tab)
Americans’ feelings about the U.S. economy make sense (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 15, 2017
A common conundrum for economists is the ongoing disconnect between macroeconomic outcomes and how Americans report feeling about the economy. While the economy is growing at a respectable rate, more…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Modeling the decline in U.S. interest rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 14, 2017
A new framework for understanding why interest rates have declined so much may help us understand where interest rates will head and how policy might boost the natural rate of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. millennials, the racial wealth divide, and asking parents for rent (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 13, 2017
Parents who help their adult children pay rent are likely to be disproportionately white, which could ultimately deepen the racial wealth gap.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
U.S. tax revenue will rise modestly in the next 10 years, no thanks to corporate taxes (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 9, 2017
The continued erosion of corporate tax revenues will have long-term effects on total federal revenues and could even contribute to a further rise in income inequality.
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Why the United States still needs paid family and medical leave (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 8, 2017
With the re-introduction of the FAMILY Act in Congress yesterday, a look at the policy and economics landscape for paid family leave.
By: Matt Markezich (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS Day Graphs: December 2016 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 7, 2017
Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s behind the decline in U.S. interest rates? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 6, 2017
A new paper takes a look at secular stagnation and the forces behind declining U.S. interest rates.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: January 2017 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 3, 2017
Earlier this morning, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of January. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
An uncertain time at the Federal Reserve (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 1, 2017
With the start of a new year and a new presidential administration, uncertainties about how much slack remains in the labor market and the path of federal fiscal policy hang…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The vast wealth gap between black and white women in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 31, 2017
Black women face a glaring gap in terms of wealth in comparison to white women.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The challenging and continuing slide in U.S. unionization rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 26, 2017
Every January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new data on how many workers in the United States are members of unions or are covered by union contracts. Today,…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Falling behind the rest of the world: Childcare in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 25, 2017
The United States spends less than almost all other developed countries on programs that help families and children.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab), Matt Markezich (opens in a new tab)
Demographics, robots, and global economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 24, 2017
Several economists have raised the alarm that an older population will slow growth, but a new working paper suggests that these fears may be overblown.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
When recessions happen, who’s most at risk? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 23, 2017
According to a new study, low-earning individuals, men, and workers in construction and manufacturing are more at risk during a recession.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Across developed countries, family policies help women (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 19, 2017
A new working paper examines family policy across Western, high-income countries, to try and establish whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between family polices and women’s employment outcomes.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Outsourcing and rising wage inequality in the United States and Germany (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 18, 2017
A new paper looking at German workers finds that domestic outsourcing leads to wage reductions of about 10 percent.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Failing to invest in young kids is damaging the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 17, 2017
A new report put out late last month by the White House Council of Economic Advisors finds that national spending levels for children are lowest for those under the age…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Repealing the Affordable Care Act could exacerbate U.S. income and health inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 12, 2017
This week, Congress is beginning to take steps to repeal the Affordable Care Act. New research shows that repeal could have significant consequences for U.S. income and health inequality. The…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Rising U.S. business concentration and the decline in labor’s share of income (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 10, 2017
A paper presented this past weekend at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations in Chicago offers a new take on an increasingly important economic policy question: What’s…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
#ASSA2017 Day 3 roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 8, 2017
The annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations is this weekend in Chicago. The conference features hundreds of sessions covering a wide variety of economics research. Interesting papers are…
#ASSA2017 Day 2 roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 7, 2017
The annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations is this weekend in Chicago. The conference features hundreds of sessions covering a wide variety of economics research. Interesting papers are…
#ASSA2017: Day 1 roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 6, 2017
The annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations started today in Chicago. The conference features hundreds of sessions covering a wide variety of economics research. Interesting papers are all…
Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: December 2016 Report Edition (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 6, 2017
Earlier this morning, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of December. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth…
By: Equitable Growth (opens in a new tab)
U.S labor market tightness, hiring, and the decline in job switching (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 4, 2017
The U.S. labor market is heading toward full employment in 2017. But not every metric of labor market health seems to be in line with previous periods of labor market…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The 10 most popular Value Added posts of 2016 (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 22, 2016
With the end of 2016 approaching, let’s take a look back at the 10 most popular Value Added posts this year: Does the one percent deserve what it gets? |…
The U.S. Recession and Recovery Have Been Tough on Everyone (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 20, 2016
The New York Times ran a surprising graph last week showing that the current economic recovery has been bad for white workers but a boon for workers of color. When…
By: John Schmitt (opens in a new tab), Nisha Chikhale (opens in a new tab)
Millions of Americans are stuck in part-time jobs (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 19, 2016
A new report finds that 6.4 million Americans are working part-time involuntarily.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Is U.S. investment capital flowing to the best possible destinations? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 15, 2016
A new paper presents some data that might make us think about how efficient U.S. capital markets are these days.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Many of the fastest growing jobs in the United States are missing men (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 14, 2016
Many of the occupations that will add the most jobs by 2024, including health care support, administrative assistance, early childhood care and education, and food preparation and services, are comprised…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
How data disaggregation matters for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 14, 2016
Hmong Americans are less likely than the average American to have a household income over $50,000, be employed, or be a college graduate. But the livelihoods of these families, which…
By: Christian Edlagan (opens in a new tab), Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
What could boost U.S. business investment? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 13, 2016
Is everything alright with the state of business investment in the United States? Weak investment growth in the years since the Great Recession—both here and abroad—raises questions.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
For American men, the black-white wage gap is at levels last seen in the 1950s (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 12, 2016
The median earnings gap between black and white men now stands at levels last seen more than 60 years ago, according to a new working paper by Patrick Bayer of…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The importance of equitable growth to absolute mobility in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 8, 2016
New research shows a precipitous decline in the probability that a person will earn more than their parents, what researchers call “absolute mobility.”
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How tight is the U.S. labor market? And how tight do we want it? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 7, 2016
Data released this morning as part of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey might be helpful not only when looking at the health of the labor market, but also…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Trump’s paid leave proposal could backfire on women and families (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 1, 2016
By excluding men and non-parental caregivers, Trump’s paid leave policy could worsen the pay gap and harm families’ economic security.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Is the cost of childcare driving women out of the U.S. workforce? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 29, 2016
New research estimates that rising childcare expenditures by families resulted in an estimated five percent decline in total employment of women and a 13 percent decline in the employment of…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Lack of market competition, rising profits, and a new way to look at the division of income in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 22, 2016
If capital is gaining an increasing share of income, then why does the rate of return on capital appear to be on the decline?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
An update on the U.S. labor market from the September JOLTS report (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 9, 2016
Every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released data on flows in the U.S. labor market. These data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey tell us about…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Technological change and upskilling in the labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 3, 2016
A new paper looks at how skill requirements for job openings changed from 2007 onwards.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Business taxation, retained earnings, and measuring income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 2, 2016
Over the past 30 years, business income has moved away from traditional corporations and toward pass-through entities, such as partnerships. This shift means more and more business income is taxed…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Functional finance vs. conventional finance: What’s really at stake? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 1, 2016
A new working paper suggests that the functional finance and conventional approaches to U.S. fiscal policy can be understood in terms of the same analytic framework.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Recessions happen. But how often? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 31, 2016
With the recovery from the Great Recession now in its eighth year, some scholars and policymakers are wondering if a recession in the United States is due to hit sometime…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is monopsony important for understanding the U.S. labor market? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 27, 2016
in a monopsonic labor market, employers have the power to set wages below what would normally prevail in a perfectly competitive labor market
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What does macroeconomic policy look like when people aren’t perfectly rational? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 26, 2016
A new paper integrates the insights of behavioral economics into the assumptions that inform a macroeconomics model.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
New research on market power and productivity (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 25, 2016
Concerns about business consolidation and increasing market power has increasingly entered the U.S. policy conversation. New research looks at how mergers and acquisitions affected productivity and market power in the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What are the effects of cash transfers on U.S. workers across generations? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 20, 2016
The idea of a child allowance is increasingly part of the policy conversation, yet policymakers aren’t sure how the recepients and their children are affected by these programs years down…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are employees willing to forgo pay for better work schedules? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 19, 2016
A new working paper finds that workers would be willing to forgo a remarkable 20 percent in wages—one fifth of their paycheck—in order to avoid jobs in which the jobs…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Yellen poses important post-Great Recession macroeconomic questions (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 18, 2016
Last week at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen idenitified several key areas for macroeconomics research in the future, particularly in areas that will…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Economic insecurity rises around childbirth, explained in four charts (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 17, 2016
Between the sleepless nights, routine doctors visits, endless baby supplies, and childcare arrangements, having a child, to put it mildly, is a mammoth investment. Parents put a significant amount of…
By: Austin Clemens (opens in a new tab), Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
How much bigger can the U.S. labor force get? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 13, 2016
The U.S. labor market continues to recover from the still lingering effects of the Great Recession, but the question on the minds of many economists and analysts is how long…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A Nobel Prize for modeling contracts (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 12, 2016
Economists Oliver Hart of Harvard University and Bengt Holmström of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their research on contract…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Do extended U.S. unemployment insurance benefits reduce employment? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 11, 2016
New research finds that the employment rate doesn’t change much in response to increases or decreases in extended unemployment benefits.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why do long-term unemployed Americans face difficulties finding jobs? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 6, 2016
Long-term unemployment has been on an upward trend over the past decade or so.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Thinking about U.S. antitrust enforcement in the 21st century (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 5, 2016
Why should policymakers care about market concentration? There’s the well-known answer that increased market power hurts consumers, but there are other reasons to be concerned.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Having a child comes with significant financial consequences (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 4, 2016
A new working paper finds that households experience a significant decline in economic well-being in the time around a birth.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Geographic mismatch might not be a big deal for U.S. unemployment (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 29, 2016
A new paper casts doubts on how much eliminating geographic barriers to employment would reduce unemployment.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s the optimal tax for capital income? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 28, 2016
A new working paper by Emmanuel Saez and Stefanie Stantcheva tries to do for capital taxation what economists have done for labor income taxation: build a simple model of optimal…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
All work and no pay for many women around the globe (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 27, 2016
A young woman entering the job market today anywhere around the globe can expect to work on average four years more than her male counterpart over a lifetime, according to…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Underemployment for recent U.S. college graduates (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 26, 2016
New research finds that the problem of temporary underemployment for college grads also may be a long-term trend in the U.S. economy.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Declining U.S. labor mobility is about more than geography (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 22, 2016
Research over the past several years shows how U.S. workers are far less likely to move across state lines. This trend has correctly led to some concern about its consequences…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Equitable Growth’s inaugural grantee conference (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 21, 2016
Today Equitable Growth hosts our inaugural grantee conference, with researchers presenting work funded through our competitive grants program. The research being presented covers areas ranging from secular stagnation and debt…
Unemployment and models of U.S. consumption (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 20, 2016
If you lost your job tomorrow, how much would you have to pull back on spending? A new paper looks at how consumption changes when a worker loses a job…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
More women in the United States are working past retirement age (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 19, 2016
A new working paper finds that the growth in older women’s increased labor force participation is overwhelmingly driven by those working full-time.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The private sector offers up new U.S. home mortgage options (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 15, 2016
Policymakers continue to discuss a number of proposals to reconsider how mortgage markets work, but it’s the private sector where change seem to on the move.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are unpredictable schedules harming U.S. workers’ health? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 14, 2016
A new working paper from Equitable Growth looks specifically at the health and well-being of workers who work unpredictable and variable hours.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Who pays U.S. taxes on inheritances? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 13, 2016
The current system for taxing capital in the United States could use quite a bit of changes, but the idea that inheritances shouldn’t be taxed due to concerns about horizontal…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How intensely are U.S. employers looking for workers? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 12, 2016
As anyone who’s tried to fill open positions knows, employers don’t just sit around waiting for workers’ resumes to show up in their inboxes. But what determines how hard employers…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The U.S. corporate income tax in a time of high profits (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 8, 2016
Apple Inc. made news yesterday when it announced the newest model of the iPhone and a number of other updates to its other products. The company was also in the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Inequality of income, wealth, or consumption? How about all three? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 7, 2016
Two new working papers provide a multidimensional view of inequality.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The Great Recession left struggling Detroiters even worse off (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 7, 2016
A new working paper quantifies just how the Great Recession affected a group of already vulnerable people—low- and moderate-income households in the Detroit metropolitan area.
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Taking a look at unpredictable schedules (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 6, 2016
A growing number of Americans are grappling with unpredictable, constantly shifting schedules.
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab), Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Looking beyond GDP when measuring welfare (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 1, 2016
A new paper by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow puts forth a new model of a person’s welfare based on how much they consume and how much time they are…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How often do Americans not pay federal taxes and receive government assistance? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 31, 2016
New research shows that the “47 percent” statistic is misleading.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Only a hint of new thinking at Jackson Hole (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 30, 2016
This past weekend, economists and central bankers gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for an annual conference hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Do local financing mechanisms in the U.S. encourage property development at the expense of public education? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 29, 2016
A common local financing mechanism known as Tax Increment Financing is a favored policy tool in the United States for revitalizing blighted properties, and, in some cases, even jumpstarting economic…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
How U.S. consumption behavior changes during recessions (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 25, 2016
Understanding the marginal propensities to consume of American households is important for economic policymaking, particularly when the U.S. economy slides into recession. Knowing how readily different households will consume an…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Retiring in the United States amid low interest rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 24, 2016
Consistently low interest rates are bedeviling monetary and fiscal policymakers these days, but they are not alone in their frustration. As John Authers and Robin Wigglesworth note in the first…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A fresh look at the wage gap on African American women’s Equal Pay Day (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 23, 2016
According to the National Organization for Women, today is African American women’s Equal Pay Day, when African American women will have worked all of 2015 through today—an additional 236 days—in…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
U.S. economic growth fundamentals for the 21st Century (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 22, 2016
What’s the difference between a policy that reduces economic growth and one that enhances it? When discussing labor and employment policies, those that support the long-term growth and stability of…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Subprime auto loans are not the second coming of the U.S. mortgage crisis (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 18, 2016
This past week on his show Last Week Tonight, the comedian John Oliver highlighted the rise of subprime automobile lending in the United States over the past couple of years.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Would cutting the U.S. corporate income tax boost wages significantly? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 17, 2016
In a column for the The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, economists Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute offered a solution to wage stagnation in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why slightly higher inflation might benefit the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 16, 2016
The U.S. Federal Reserve Board hasn’t hit its stated inflation target of two percent in more than four years, at least according to its preferred measure. One reason for this…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is Tax Increment Financing the pathway to rebuilding blighted U.S. infrastructure? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 15, 2016
It’s no secret that the infrastructure in the United States is underfunded, under-maintained, and, consequently, crumbling in many communities across the country, as it has been over the course of…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
A new proposal to reform the U.S. estate tax (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 10, 2016
A new paper by NYU Law Professor David Kamin contends that it is possible to expand and reform wealth taxes in a way that not only increases government revenue but…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Preschool is about more than a third grade test score (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 9, 2016
The partial fade-out of cognitive skills is not necessarily an indicator of whether preschool is effective
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
Persistent economic disadvantage and education inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 3, 2016
A new paper finds a significant difference in test scores in the 8th grade between students who are occasionally eligible for subsidized lunches and those who have been eligible every…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Federal budget deficits, U.S. interest rates, and rates of return (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 2, 2016
Why would increasing the federal budget deficit be a good public policy idea? It may have something to do with declining interest rates and potentially high rates of returns on…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does stronger wage growth mean it’s time to hike interest rates? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 1, 2016
Accelerating wage growth evident in the recent Employment Cost Index data indicates that slack is indeed on the decline. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Wage…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does a higher U.S. minimum wage hurt employment? A look abroad for answers (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 28, 2016
As U.S. policymakers weigh the consequences of a higher minimum wage at the national level, a look at the experiences of other nations demonstrates that the minimum wage is one…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The permanent income hypothesis, wealth inequality, and anti-recessionary stimulus (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 27, 2016
Taking a look at the permanent income hypothesis and how inequality, specifically wealth inequality, influences consumption.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Protecting against risk can help boost U.S. entrepreneurship (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 26, 2016
A new paper looks at the effect of a Canadian maternity-leave reform on entrepreneurship
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Did the Great Recession reduce U.S. productivity growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 25, 2016
A new paper argues that productivity, and therefore long-term economic growth, can be affected by companies pulling back on investment and the adoption of new technologies during recessions.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Meet Equitable Growth’s 2016 grantees (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 20, 2016
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is excited to introduce our 2016 round of grantees.
Ireland’s spectacular economic growth reveals a stark truth about corporate tax avoidance (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 18, 2016
Ireland’s booming gross domestic product growth rate isn’t a lie, but it highlights a peculiar thing about the country—its status as a tax haven.
By: Matt Markezich (opens in a new tab)
How other nations handle student debt and what the United States could learn from them (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 14, 2016
Given the extent of the student debt burden in the United States, stretching out payments over time could reduce the crush of today’s burden and potentially stem the rise in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A graphical update on the latest data on the U.S. jobs market (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 13, 2016
Yesterday morning, the U.S. bureau of statistics released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, data for May 2016.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Technological change and the future demand for labor (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 12, 2016
Jason Furman, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers gave a speech last week on the “opportunities and challenges” presented by artificial intelligence.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The potential costs of “short-termism” to U.S. economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 11, 2016
A new paper looks at whether firms cut back on research and development to hit projected short-term profit goals.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Have mutual funds boosted CEO pay in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 7, 2016
A new working paper finds a relationship between common ownership of an industry and the kind of compensation contracts that chief executives receive.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of childhood education and the birth lottery for U.S. innovation (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 6, 2016
A new working paper finds that children who are white, male, and from high-income backgrounds are much more likely to get a patent later in life.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. democracy stuck in an “inequality trap” (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 5, 2016
Economic inequality in the United States appears to be trapped in a vicious cycle, as shown by several new working papers published today by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
The continued rigidity of wages in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 30, 2016
New research challenges the assumption that wage rigidity causes unemployment to spike during recessions.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How the U.S. housing boom hid weaknesses in the labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 29, 2016
New research finds that the employment sag would have been greater if not for the increased demand from the housing bubble, as the construction industry hired many workers who left…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The roles of firms and pay decisions in rising U.S. income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 28, 2016
New research looking at the role of inter-firm and intra-firm inequality finds different results depending on the size of the firm.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Making automatic stabilizers more effective for the next U.S. recession (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 23, 2016
A new paper looks at the optimal design of both unemployment insurance and the income tax in light of their ability to act as automatic stabilizers in a recession.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s behind the decline in male labor force participation in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 22, 2016
One of the most discussed problems in the U.S. labor market in recent years is the decline in the labor force participation rate, or the share of the population that’s…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
International capital flows and secular stagnation (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 21, 2016
One of the reasons why so many people are interested in determining the natural rate of interest is due to its implications for the secular-stagnation hypothesis
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Determining the natural rate of interest (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 20, 2016
As you might expect from institutions that try to affect interest rates, the Fed and other central banks have a strong interest in figuring out the natural rate.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How wealth and income inequality may affect U.S. economic downturns (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 16, 2016
Two new papers investigate how income and wealth inequality might shape recessions.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are U.S. government economic surveys reaching the right mix of respondents? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 15, 2016
New research finds that people’s willingness or ability to respond to a government survey is related to their working status, possibly biasing the survey results.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. labor market frictions and occupational licensing (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 14, 2016
New research on one particularly important licensed profession—nursing—indicates that occupational licensing may not be as large a problem as some policymakers and economists have assumed.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The open questions about the rise of U.S. job openings (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 13, 2016
One of the more disconcerting trends in the U.S. labor market since the end of the Great Recession is the divergence between the rate of hiring and the rate at…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A look at overwork in three charts (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 9, 2016
A few graphs from Equitable Growth’s recent report, Overworked America, which examines the causes and consequences of long work hours.
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab), Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The level of the U.S. corporate income tax rate is important, but it’s not everything (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 8, 2016
For the past few years, policymakers on both sides of the aisle in Washington DC have hoped that the next U.S. election cycle would create the right conditions for “tax…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are low-interest rates contributing to low business investment? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 7, 2016
Do low interest rates affect retiree decision-making?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The problematic returns of for-profit colleges (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 6, 2016
New research suggests that default rates and debt burdens are rising among students at for-profit colleges.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What happens if the “unicorn” bubble bursts? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 2, 2016
What would happen to the economy if the current Silicon Valley bubble bursts?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Investing in early childhood education is good for children and good for the economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 1, 2016
Over this past holiday weekend, Ross Douthat used his New York Times column to express frustration that hoping for a “substantive debate about domestic policy” in this presidential election year…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
What happened to America’s dynamism? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 31, 2016
If declining dynamism is a symptom of underlying economic problems, then what ails the U.S. economy?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why public assistance for children should address what happens before birth (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 26, 2016
A new paper shows just how much the circumstances before a child’s birth can affect their outcomes later in life.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. tax policy complicated by falling taxes on U.S. stocks (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 24, 2016
Some propose that we levy a tax on shareholders who receive dividends from the company instead of taxing the capital income at the corporate level. But as clean and clever…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How high levels of inequality might change what innovation we see (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 19, 2016
Has the rise in income inequality spurred companies into innovating more for households at the top of the income distribution?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The new overtime rule is “good economics and good business” (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 18, 2016
The Department of Labor is set to issue a final ruling to expand the Fair Labor Standard Act’s overtime coverage today, making salaried workers earning up to $47,476 a year…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Equity crowdfunding is here. Now what? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 17, 2016
The crowdfunding provision of the JOBS Act was developed in the hope that it would jumpstart small business formation and broaden investor access to the high-returns of these young firms…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Maybe central banks should buy stocks as well (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 16, 2016
Perhaps monetary policy or fiscal policy, should consider intervening in a much riskier market: stocks.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The shifting fate of the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 12, 2016
With unemployment hovering around 5 percent and wage growth still tepid, what does the Beveridge curve shift tell us about the state of the labor market?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The shadow incarceration casts on employment and income gains (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 11, 2016
High rates of incarceration distorts our economic data, which in several ways makes us underestimate the state of—and overestimate the improvement in—some forms of racial inequalities.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How important was leverage after the U.S. housing bubble burst? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 10, 2016
A new paper finds that housing debt might matter less than we currently believe.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Labor gains in an era of low productivity growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 5, 2016
What are we to make of a rising labor share when productivity growth is close to zero?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Income mobility over a lifetime might be on the decline (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 3, 2016
A new paper shows that intragenerational mobility in the United States has been on the decline amid rising income inequality.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s the deal with U.S. wage growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 2, 2016
Why hasn’t accelerating wage growth appeared yet? There are a number of possibilities, each a likely contributor to the failure of wage growth to pick up. The challenge is figuring…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
When it comes to causality, no one technique should have all that power (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 28, 2016
David Card and Alan Krueger sparked thinking about how researchers could show the causal impact of a new policy or a shock to the economy—and it’s now a key part…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The basic economics of a guaranteed income (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 27, 2016
The idea of a guaranteed income or a basic income is slowly making its way back into policy debates.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Competition in the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 26, 2016
The growing prevalence of occupational licensing and non-compete agreements may be reducing competition in the labor market.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Some new stylized facts for a financialized economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 21, 2016
In the wake of the Great Recession, economists have started to grapple with the fact that their macroeconomic models didn’t fully appreciate the importance of the financial sector in the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Preparing for retirement when there’s a savings glut (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 20, 2016
If we think a relative oversupply of savings is a problem, how should we consider increasing retirement security for many Americans?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Economic rents are rising, and it matters who receives them (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 19, 2016
In a newly released brief, the Council of Economic Advisers highlights how “common ownership” of companies through index funds and other funds by asset managers could affect competition. We shouldn’t…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Working toward a new U.S. competition policy (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 15, 2016
President Obama and his Administration are taking new steps to put more emphasis on competition policy in the United States.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
You filed your taxes. Congrats, you’re administrative data! (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 14, 2016
A look at Tax Day from a rarely considered angle: the importance of administrative data, and expanding access to it.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Unemployment insurance might increase unemployment, but only slightly (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 13, 2016
There’s been some concern that by reducing the incentive to find work, expanding unemployment insurance actually increases the unemployment rate. A new paper says that may be true but that…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of income and place in U.S. life expectancy (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 12, 2016
Studies show that increases in life expectancy are accruing disproportionately to high-income Americans. And a new study shows that increases in the inequality of life expectancy in the United States…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Investing in social infrastructure as an anti-recession tool (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 11, 2016
Spending more on physical infrastructure projects is the traditional way to help revive a faltering economy. But a new report argues that government investment in “social infrastructure” will produce more…
By: John Schmitt (opens in a new tab)
Why it’s time to rethink non-compete agreements (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 7, 2016
A new report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury looks at the extent and impact of non-compete agreements in the labor market.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS and another look at the health of the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 6, 2016
Businesses are hiring workers at a rate in line with what we’ve seen at similar levels of the unemployment rate, but are posting jobs at a much higher rate. What…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Panama and the opacity of global capital (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 5, 2016
After leaked data revealed how the world’s elites have used shell corporations to illegally hide their money, it’s worthwhile to look at the broader system that allows for the legal…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
African American workers are hurt more by the decline in union and manufacturing jobs (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 31, 2016
The combination of the downturn in manufacturing jobs and the decline in unionization has disproportionately affected African American workers. As we pursue policies to improve the quality of work, we…
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
The gig economy? Or the fissured workplace? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 30, 2016
The growth of online apps like Uber has ignited a debate about the “gig economy,” in which people don’t hold regular jobs in traditional workplaces but rather work in some…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Medicaid, job lock, and moving up the job ladder (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 29, 2016
New research finds that more generous state Medicaid programs have benefits beyond its residents’ health, and also improve workers’ chances of moving into a higher-paying occupation or industry.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The labor share, the ongoing recovery, and structural forces (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 28, 2016
Last week, the media turned its attention to the distribution of economic growth.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What tools do central banks have left? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 24, 2016
In the United States, the combination of our tepid recovery from the Great Recession, the low rates of inflation, and interest rates hovering around zero despite extraordinary amounts of expansionary…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How low-income tax credits might be improved (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 23, 2016
New research by economists Hilary Hoynes and Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley takes a deeper look at the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Firm wage setting and the rise of U.S. income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 22, 2016
New research investigates the role of wage setting by firms in wage inequality.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why some parts of the United States will feel the effects of the Great Recession until 2021 (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 21, 2016
New research predicts that the areas hit hardest by the Great Recession will continue to struggle with the effects of the economic downturn for years to come.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
“Throwing money at the problem” may actually work in education (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 17, 2016
When it comes to tackling the United States’ large and growing achievement gap between high- and low-income children, today’s education policy entrepreneurs have increasingly adopted an accountability-and-evaluation mindset. Well-known policies…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Appreciating the new economics of the minimum wage (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 16, 2016
“Myth and Measurement” by David Card and Alan Krueger was recently re-released as a 20th anniversary edition. While it’s common now to hear that raising the minimum wage won’t increase…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How extending credit can fight recessions (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 15, 2016
If economists, analysts, and policymakers are starting to think about the proper mix of fiscal and monetary policy to fight future recessions, perhaps they should start considering the role of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does inequality affect high school dropout rates? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 14, 2016
A new paper by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine unpacks the possible causal relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility, looking at how higher levels of inequality might affect the decisions…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is weak U.S. wage growth all because of who’s getting jobs? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 10, 2016
Although the U.S. unemployment rate is under 5 percent—many economists’ estimate for the lowest possible rate of unemployment that won’t trigger accelerating inflation—U.S. wage growth is far from robust.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s your college degree worth? It may depend on your parents’ income (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 9, 2016
A college degree may not be the great equalizer in terms of reducing income inequality. New research suggests the returns to higher education for a student are partly influenced by…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why is U.S. labor market fluidity drying up? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 8, 2016
The U.S. labor market is a far less dynamic place than it was 30 years ago. Workers today are less likely to get a job while unemployed, move into unemployment,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How concerned should we be about business investment and productivity growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 3, 2016
Declining business investments and dynamism is a factor in the recent productivity growth slowdown. But how concerned should we be? Remarks by Jason Furman provide a good starting point for…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why less job searching can be a good thing (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 2, 2016
A new paper gives further evidence that extending unemployment insurance benefits may tighten the labor market.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why we need better re-employment policies for formerly incarcerated African American men (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 29, 2016
The disproportionate rate in the incarceration of black men not only reflects flaws in our criminal justice system but also contributes to an unequal labor market.
By: Carmen Ye (opens in a new tab)
History shows why New Hampshire has room for higher minimum wages (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 26, 2016
New Hampshire is a relatively high-wage state. But it also has the lowest minimum wage in the nation. As such, New Hampshire has more opportunity than most other states to…
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
Carbon inequities, climate change, and complementary solutions (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 25, 2016
Because carbon dioxide emissions increase greenhouse gas levels and in turn exacerbate climate change, environmentalists have been proposing a tax on the carbon contents of goods and services. Here’s how…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab)
What explains the rise in income inequality at the top of the income distribution? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 23, 2016
Skill-biased technological change is a prominent explanation for the rise in income inequality over the past few decades, but it is not clear how this theory can explain the differential…
By: Matt Markezich (opens in a new tab)
Abundance and the direction of technological growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 18, 2016
Given the slow productivity growth in the United States, there’s been quite a bit of thinking recently about how to push productivity growth up. One provocative idea that has captured…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why the mismeasurement explanation for the U.S. productivity slowdown misses the mark (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 17, 2016
A new working paper rejects the argument that our current measures of economic output and productivity understate reality.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why it’d be nice if the “job-hopping” Millennial story were true (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 16, 2016
One stereotype of Millennials is that they are constantly hopping from one job to another, unable to hold one down. Unfortunately for that narrative, the data don’t seem to back…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Giving credit to the unemployed (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 11, 2016
Increased credit can help an unemployed worker ride out their lack of a job until they find a new one. But if the worker had access to more credit, how…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why it makes sense to look at nominal wage growth right now (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 10, 2016
Why should we think that nominal wage growth is important? Well, think about the last time you asked for a raise or a new salary in inflation-adjusted terms. More likely…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The more elastic you are, the less you lose (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 9, 2016
Taxes are tricky. You might think that taxing a good means that the people producing it end up paying the tax, but that’s not always the case. Producers sometimes are…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Where you grow up can affect your chances of employment (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 8, 2016
The share of men with a job has been on the decline since about the 1960s, and that trend holds up for men of all ages as well as for…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. job growth slows in January, as the nation remains years away from full employment (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 5, 2016
U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs last month, compared to the 262,000 jobs added in December. The best news in today’s report was that the nation’s prime-age employment rate jumped to…
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
The level and trend of the U.S. gender wage gap (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 4, 2016
A new working paper by Cornell University’s Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn digs into what we know about the gender wage gap.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The recession next time (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 3, 2016
June will mark seven years since the end of the Great Recession, and many economists and policymakers have turned their attention to the next recession. More specifically, they’re starting to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How do we make sure savings become wealth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 2, 2016
Policymakers looking to reduce wealth inequality should focus on policies that would help Americans improve their savings rates.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Cash [demand] rules everything around us (opens in a new tab)
Essays FEB 1, 2016
The Bank of Japan last Friday introduced a negative interest policy for the first time, and has signaled that it’s prepared to push rates further negative. So how far can…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s happened to U.S. housing inequality? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 28, 2016
A new paper suggests that the main culprit seems to be increased housing segregation.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Context may be everything when it comes to the Phillips curve (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 26, 2016
With U.S. wage growth seemingly accelerating over the end of 2015, it’s worth thinking about how the relationship between the strength of the labor market and inflation is holding up.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The corporate savings glut and the economic possibilities of the future (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 25, 2016
Since 2000, the corporate sector has moved from borrowing funds from the rest of the economy to being a net saver. This dramatic transformation, sometimes called the “corporate savings glut,”…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why employers might like paid leave programs (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 21, 2016
While just three states have implemented a comprehensive paid leave program, their experiences can be instructive in thinking about what a federal paid leave policy might look like.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The Federal Reserve and awareness of racial inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 20, 2016
The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday sparked reflection from one former Federal Reserve official, who argues that the Fed’s “vision of economic diversity” has a blind spot when it comes…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Demographics don’t explain the decline in quitting (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 19, 2016
The decline in the quit rate started in 2000 around the same time that the Baby Boom Generation starting hitting retirement age. This timing has sparked some concerns that a…
By: Kavya Vaghul (opens in a new tab), Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Like grandmother, like granddaughter: Education doesn’t change (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 14, 2016
A new working paper analyzing female educational attainment across three generations concludes that the connection between a grandmother’s and granddaughter’s educational attainment is much stronger than previously assumed.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What’s happening to the growth of productive new firms? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 13, 2016
New research presented at the Allied Social Science Associations annual meeting in San Francisco shows how the growth of more productive firms isn’t what it once was.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How minimum-wage increases affect the flow of firms (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 12, 2016
The vast research on minimum-wage hikes mostly focuses on the level of employment, with the occasional paper on worker flows. But workers are just one side of a job. Minimum-wage…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Thinking about wealth taxes (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 11, 2016
Economists and other analysts have taken a deeper look into some of the economics of a global wealth tax—and some of the results are very interesting.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Intellectual property and the decline of the U.S. labor share (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 7, 2016
Recent research about the decline of the labor share has caused economists to reconsider the continued relevance of the “stylized fact” that the labor share is constant. Labor and capital…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
#ASSA2016: Day 3 roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 5, 2016
Here are some of the papers that caught our eyes during the final day of the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations.
#ASSA2016: Day 2 roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 4, 2016
The annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations started yesterday in San Francisco. The conference features hundreds of sessions covering a wide variety of economics research. Interesting papers are…
#ASSA2016: Day 1 Roundup (opens in a new tab)
Essays JAN 3, 2016
The annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations started today in San Francisco. The conference features hundreds of sessions covering a wide variety of economics research. Interesting papers are…
The 10 most popular Value Added posts of 2015 (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 30, 2015
As 2015 draws to a close, we take a look back at the year’s most popular Value Added posts.
A non-exclusive list of interesting graphs from 2015 (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 28, 2015
With 2015 about to end, let’s take a look back at some of the year’s most interesting graphs.
What explains the rise in college tuition in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 23, 2015
What if the student loans—one of the tools to decrease net tuition—were actually increasing the gross price in the first place? A growing body of research is showing just that.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What explains the rise in college tuition in the United States? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 23, 2015
Might a policy intended to push down tuition actually push it up more?
What are the factors behind high economic rents? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 21, 2015
While “rents” might have broken through as a compelling story for why inequality has risen in the United States, a new paper by Dean Baker proposes a very different reason…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What the Fed’s method of raising interest rates reveals about the state of the global economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 17, 2015
A lot has changed since the last interest rate hike, including the rise of the shadow banking system—of which the repo market is one aspect. While the changes in the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
This is not the rate hike you’re looking for (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 16, 2015
The Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates will result in fewer workers employed than otherwise and slower wage growth. Their choice is one to not fully use the potential…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The upside of expanding access to the Earned Income Tax Credit (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 15, 2015
Workers without children don’t currently have access to the full extent of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Given the success of the program, it makes sense to broaden access to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Trying to get a grip on the gig economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 14, 2015
The data show that independent “gig economy” contractors won’t become a major share of workers anytime soon. So what’s with the hype?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
There’s more to capital taxation than capital gains (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 10, 2015
If policymakers want to consider taxing unrealized capital income, the realization-based tax system isn’t going to get at those gains. So what are the other options?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
JOLTS and the health of the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 9, 2015
As the end of the seven years of zero percent short-term interest rates in the United States seemingly draws to a close, it’s time to take another look at the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The consequences of unskewed U.S. business growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 8, 2015
This declining dynamism of U.S. firms has come among a variety of other downturns in the creation, destruction, and growth of American businesses. The result is that, since 2000, the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Counterfactuals, quality, and the effects of prekindergarten (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 7, 2015
A recent literature review of prekindergarten studies shows how important context is for understanding the effectiveness of these programs, and how the lessons from these studies can help policymakers improve…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s aging got to do with the U.S. labor market recovery? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 4, 2015
One oft-cited explanation for the low overall employment rate—the aging of the U.S. population—does not satisfactorily explain the slow labor market recovery.
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
How much has the decline in the labor share affected income inequality? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 3, 2015
A new working paper finds that rising income inequality has been predominantly driven by rising wage inequality rather than a declining share of income going to labor
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How do you solve a problem like profit shifting? (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 2, 2015
With the current global corporate taxation system, companies have found ways to shift their profits to countries that have very low corporate tax rates or even no corporate tax rate…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
For kids’ future, money does matter (opens in a new tab)
Essays DEC 1, 2015
Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it may have significant effects on children’s mental health and personality traits—particularly for our country’s most vulnerable kids.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Is the lack of paid leave partly to blame for declining U.S. labor force participation? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 30, 2015
A new OECD paper suggests that the United States’ failure to implement federal paid family leave policies isn’t just hurting individual families and children.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Will workers reap from changing demographics? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 24, 2015
What does a decline in population today mean for the global economy?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Housing supply, rents, and economic mobility (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 23, 2015
The debate about the causes of declining geographic mobility in the United States continues apace with a new contribution from Jason Furman, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Corporate surpluses, savings, and economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 19, 2015
For those concerned about the pace of future economic growth and perhaps economic stability, the rise of corporate savings has important implications.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The consequences and causes of declining geographic mobility in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 18, 2015
Recent data shows that the rate at which U.S. workers move to other states and counties is still historically low. This has important implications for our economy, even if we…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How high can the minimum wage go? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 17, 2015
By looking at the available research on the minimum wage and its strength over the years, we can weigh the relative merits of specific proposals to raise the wage.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
More Americans are working “strange” hours (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 12, 2015
It’s no secret that Americans are working harder than ever. But new research examines another aspect of our work-devoted culture: the tendency to work “strange hours,” or nights and weekends.
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What problem does crowdfunding venture capital solve? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 10, 2015
Three years after the passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has formally adopted one of the act’s more significant reforms—allowing companies…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why ‘disgorging the cash’ can undermine economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 9, 2015
Business investment growth has been quite weak over the course of this recovery. Why this investment recovery has been so weak, however, may have less to do with monetary policy…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The U.S. labor market and the health of workers (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 6, 2015
Employment growth was strong in October, with the U.S. economy adding 271,000 jobs in the month, according to the latest employment and earnings data released by the U.S. Bureau of…
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
Austerity, inverse Say’s Law, and secular stagnation (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 5, 2015
The turn to austerity so early during the recovery from the Great Recession seems to have been premature. In fact, some economists are starting to wonder if we should have…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Rising U.S. mortality and its potential economic causes (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 4, 2015
In 1999, middle-aged white men in the United States began to experience an increase in mortality and morbidity rates. Is the economy to blame?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How readily can we get the long-term unemployed back to work? (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 3, 2015
A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper released this week presents evidence that we might be able to get long-term unemployed workers back into employment more readily than many…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Accelerating wage growth has yet to show up (opens in a new tab)
Essays NOV 2, 2015
Another quarter has gone by, and accelerating wage growth has yet to show up.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s the price of free-flowing capital? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 29, 2015
We should be aware of the problems that can arise when lots of foreign capital flows into a country.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Checking in on the herd of unicorns (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 28, 2015
Unicorns are high-growth start-ups in an economy with a declining start-up rate. Holding them up as a new model for the U.S. economy doesn’t add up. They are, it seems,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A kink in the Phillips curve (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 27, 2015
The Phillips curve has broken in recent years—there’s not a strong relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate. Does the curve still make sense for policymaking?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How tax expenditures distort our understanding of the U.S. tax code (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 26, 2015
So not only are tax expenditures inefficient and inequitable, but they are also opaque. They give a misleading picture of the actual amount of federal government spending, and they make…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Calculating the leak in Okun’s bucket (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 22, 2015
Forty years ago, Arthur Okun proposed an interesting thought experiment in his book Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-Off. He imagined the redistribution of income like moving water in a…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
We need better data on U.S. entrepreneurship (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 21, 2015
Economists don’t really understand the factors underpinning entrepreneurship that well. That’s startling, given its important role in innovation, productivity, and economic growth.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A look at U.S. tax rates at the top (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 20, 2015
Not only do higher tax rates affect the level of inequality, but they also determine the amount of revenue available to the government. In other words, it’s a matter of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Putting rents at the center of U.S. income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 19, 2015
The rise of income inequality in the United States since the late 1970s is a well-documented fact, but the reasons for the rise still aren’t well understood. The possible culprits…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of low U.S. interest rates in the long run (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 15, 2015
While short-term interest rates have been incredibly low in recent years, long-term rates have been on the decline for several decades. What does that mean for the U.S. economy?
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The measured Angus Deaton wins the Nobel Prize (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 14, 2015
Many pixels have been spilled in recent days explaining and analyzing the research of Princeton University economist Angus Deaton, the news Nobel laureate in economics. In giving him the award,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Minimum wage workers and the collapse of the job ladder (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 13, 2015
FiveThirtyEight’s Ben Casselman recently explained that it’s becoming harder and harder for U.S. minimum-wage workers to move up the wage ladder. According to his analysis, during the mid-1990s, only one…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How delayed foreclosures can actually lead to higher wages (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 8, 2015
The foreclosure crisis in the aftermath of the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble was incredibly damaging to millions of families. Due to the sheer number of mortgages in default,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What does and does not boost economic growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 7, 2015
At a time of stagnant U.S. economic growth, magic seems to be not only an attractive option to boost growth, but perhaps the only feasible one. In a series of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Untangling the sources of racial wealth inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 6, 2015
While education, income levels, homeownership, and inheritances play a major role in the persistent racial wealth gap, discrimination and other unobservable factors are also at fault.
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A tale of three U.S. employment-to-population ratios (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 5, 2015
The press received the most recent labor market data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics late last week as unexpected bad news because employment growth slowed and wage growth…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Where is the U.S. labor market recovery for prime-age workers? (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 2, 2015
The weak employment and earnings growth—reported today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics—shows that the labor market is still recovering from the shocks of the Great Recession.
By: Ben Zipperer (opens in a new tab)
The relationship between U.S. productivity growth and the decline in the labor share of national income (opens in a new tab)
Essays OCT 1, 2015
One of the ongoing debates about the state of the U.S. economy is the extent to which the profits from productivity gains are increasingly going to the owners of capital…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Here’s how high levels of household debt affect economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 29, 2015
The Great Recession and its aftermath sparked a lot of rethinking about economics and economic policy. One recurring theme in this rethinking is the danger of debt. In “This Time…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The shifting sources of U.S. business income and its contribution to income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 28, 2015
Conversations about business taxation in the United States usually center on the corporate income tax. For a long time, this intellectual shortcut made a good amount of sense, as traditional…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why just expanding credit might not be enough for U.S. monetary policy (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 23, 2015
The prevailing U.S. monetary policy during and after the Great Recession remains the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest-rate policy, lowering rates in any way possible to enable financial institutions in turn to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why is so much wealth hidden? Failed democracy. (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 22, 2015
This morning, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth is hosting a discussion with University of California-Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman about his important new book, “The Hidden Wealth of Nations.” Using…
By: Marshall Steinbaum (opens in a new tab)
A new insight into economic inequality and governance (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 21, 2015
Inequality can affect how the U.S. economy functions in a variety of ways. High levels of wealth inequality may change how consumers respond to recessions. Unequal household incomes might hinder…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What would a rate hike by the Federal Reserve mean? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 17, 2015
The Federal Open Markets Committee, the policy-making arm of the Federal Reserve, finishes its September meeting later today. It’s been one of the most anticipated meetings in years as it…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why U.S. tax credits and tax deductions for higher education don’t work (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 16, 2015
The ever-rising cost of a college education in the United States is causing policymakers across the United States to consider ways to reduce those costs. With good reason. The amount…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Keep an eye on changes to U.S. corporate income tax proposals (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 15, 2015
The current U.S. presidential election process not surprisingly features a number of tax reform idea, some well thought out and others not so much. More concrete ideas about overhauling the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The pace of productivity growth and misallocation in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 10, 2015
Productivity is a term bandied about by academics, policymakers, and pundits alike, yet most of us aren’t sure what it means—even though we know it when we see it. In…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Caring for the elderly in America now includes a minimum wage and overtime (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 9, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit late last month reinstated a U.S. Department of Labor regulation that gives minimum wage and overtime protection to home care workers.…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Finance and competition in the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 8, 2015
Critiques of the U.S. financial system over the past seven years largely zero in on how it was able to spark a massive recession. But increasingly, some economists, policy makers,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
U.S. jobs growth remains too slow (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 4, 2015
The employment and earnings data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that wages are still growing but at too slow of a rate to stem the…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Where are U.S. data on the gig economy? (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 3, 2015
There’s an old joke about the economist who loses his car keys one night and only looks for them directly under a lamppost. Why would he look where there wasn’t…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Schedules that work for families and the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 2, 2015
Anyone who has a job knows that the key feature of work is giving someone else control of your time. For some of us, this is a straightforward process. The…
By: Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Netflix and the paid family leave debate (opens in a new tab)
Essays SEP 1, 2015
The on-demand media provider Netflix Inc. made the surprise announcement last month that it will provide its employees with one year of paid, unlimited leave policy following the birth of…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Measures of U.S. labor market conditions for the Fed to ponder (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 31, 2015
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee faces lots of crosswinds as it ponders whether to start raising short-term rates off of zero percent at its mid-September meeting. Turbulence in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What might make monetary policy more effective in the future? (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 12, 2015
It increasingly looks like the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in September. So this month might be a good time to look back at the Fed’s extensive monetary…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The distribution of pay and the willingness to quit among U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 11, 2015
As the U.S. labor market continues its slow but steady recovery from the Great Recession, the movements in the so-called quit rate, or the share of workers voluntarily leaving their…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Low hiring rates do not point to strong U.S. wage growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 7, 2015
The jobs numbers released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that wage gains in the United States are far below what would be considered healthy wage growth.…
By: David Evans (opens in a new tab)
CEO pay ratios and a new source of inequality data (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 7, 2015
This past Wednesday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 that requires public companies to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The declining impact of U.S. income taxes on wealth inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 6, 2015
A growing number of papers measuring U.S. wealth inequality and its continuing growth were published over the past year. One of those key papers, by economists Emmanuel Saez of the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Auto loans and the stability of U.S. consumption growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 5, 2015
One of the reasons so many economists and policymakers are concerned about the stagnant state of wage growth in the United States is its relationship to the growth of consumption…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Implementing and policing higher minimum wages at the local level (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 4, 2015
Minimum wage hikes as a policy response to stagnant wage growth for U.S. workers at the bottom of the wage ladder are increasingly popular these days. But this popularity isn’t…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Wage growth and the health of the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays AUG 3, 2015
More than 6 years after the end of the Great Recession, the strength of the U.S. labor market remains not entirely clear. The U.S. economy has added jobs for 57…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The alarming deterioration of U.S. household surveys (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 30, 2015
A peak behind the curtain that shields the U.S. economic data-making process can be alarming at times. At least, that’s the upshot of a National Bureau of Economic Research paper…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The state of tax progressivity across the United States (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 29, 2015
A group of Massachusetts advocates are working to get a ballot measure up for a vote that would create a new income tax bracket specifically for millionaires within the state.…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A U.S. financial transaction tax and the allocation of capital (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 28, 2015
The U.S. financial services sector has undergone quite a bit of reform since the housing and financial crises of 2007-2009 laid low the global economy. Yet concerns about the scope…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Rising U.S. compensation inequality and productivity growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 27, 2015
One of the more contentious debates about the changes in the U.S. economy is the question of whether wages have grown in tandem with productivity growth. The debate hinges on…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The upside of more equity for big financial institutions (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 23, 2015
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the financial reform law that overhauled the U.S. financial system in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What’s the matter with the federal disability insurance program? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 22, 2015
The White House last week released a report about the current and future condition of Social Security Disability Insurance. The report covers a variety of details about the federal disability…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The measurement and future of U.S. productivity growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 21, 2015
Productivity is a hard statistic to pin down. Never mind conceptual distinctions such as the difference between labor productivity and total factor productivity. The actual measurement of productivity itself—defined broadly…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is technological change key in the decline of U.S. labor share of income? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 20, 2015
The share of national income going to U.S. workers has been on the decline since 2000 despite long-held economic expectations to the contrary. The reason for this decline has been…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Beware of simple U.S. tax reform plans (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 17, 2015
Senator Russell B. Long, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee during the late 1960s and the 1970s, once remarked that efforts to reform the tax system worked under principle of…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Reforms to “just-in-time” scheduling practices now before Congress (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 16, 2015
The Schedules That Work Act proposes a set of reforms that would give workers in these industries more predictable and stable schedules, targeting in particular the growth in just-in-time scheduling…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Should average investors be chasing unicorns? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 15, 2015
Startup firms reaching “unicorn” status—private companies such as Uber, Dropbox, and Spotify valued at more than $1 billion—and the general fervor about high-tech startups are now fodder for movies, novels,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The vexing question of the U.S. housing bubble origins (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 14, 2015
Back in 2005, a massive increase in mortgage credit and U.S. housing prices resulted in household debt almost doubling. Today, while the consequences of that bubble are still very evident,…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Does Nevada’s new school choice program hurt low- and middle-income students? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 9, 2015
Nevada governor Brian Sandoval last month signed into law the first state-wide universal school choice program in the United States. The program will pay low-income families and children with disabilities…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The merits of funding U.S. infrastructure investments with a corporate tax holiday (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 8, 2015
The U.S. Highway Trust Fund is in a bit of a bind. Absent transfers from general federal funds, the trust fund will run out of money very soon. Even with…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are estimates of the long-term U.S. unemployment rate too high? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 7, 2015
Economists generally agree that the long-term unemployment rate is the best way to gauge when the labor market hits its equilibrium—a condition where unemployment is low, but not so low…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What will happen if the U.S. overtime threshold is raised? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 6, 2015
President Obama late last week announced that the U.S. Department of Labor is proposing a change to overtime regulations. Specifically, the regulation would increase the income threshold under which workers…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Looking Beyond the Latest U.S. Jobs Data (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 2, 2015
Every month the top-line data about the growth of jobs and wages in the U.S. economy are swiftly dissected by the financial markets for indications about the strength and direction…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A key tool to fight housing inequality remains intact (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUL 1, 2015
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy summed up the need to continue to combat housing inequality in the United States succinctly late last month. “De jure residential segregation by race was…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Is China the most worrisome debt crisis today? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 30, 2015
This week seems to be one for worrying about debt and default. Greece is on the verge of potentially defaulting on obligations owed to the International Monetary Fund, which could…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Patience is a virtue when it comes to U.S. interest rates (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 29, 2015
The last time the U.S. Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates was in early July 2006. To say a few things about the economy have changed since then is quite…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The benefits of more information when applying to college (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 26, 2015
Applying to college can be an exciting yet overwhelming process. Students try to figure out what schools might be a good fit for them both educationally and for their longer-term…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The limits of reforming the U.S. private-sector retirement system (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 25, 2015
Looking at the future of retirement in the United States doesn’t reveal a pretty picture. Life expectancies are on the rise as the personal savings rate falls. Participation in employer-sponsored…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Reevaluating Head Start (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 24, 2015
Policymakers across the political spectrum are turning to the expansion of early childhood education as a potential solution to low economic mobility and slow growth within the United States. Research…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Debt, equity, and differences among financial bubbles (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 23, 2015
Financial bubbles burst with varying effects depending on the kinds of assets that rose in value in the boom years. Macroeconomists, financial analysts, and policymakers alike are aware of these…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How much is the Internet worth to the average American? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 18, 2015
An individual’s well-being is a hard concept to pin down, never mind to measure. Economists have long modeled how economic agents maximize their utility given their limited resources. Unfortunately, they…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What is predistribution? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 16, 2015
One of the many threads in the debates about rising income inequality is the broad strategy by which policymakers should attempt to reduce inequality. There are two schools of thought…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What happens when firms can choose wages? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 15, 2015
In an introductory economics course, students are shown models of the labor market that assume the market is perfectly competitive. Wages are set by supply and demand, the well-known mechanisms…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Fair housing, mortgages, and the U.S. Supreme Court (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 12, 2015
Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project. In the case, the state government asserts that a decades-old component of the Fair Housing Act of 1968—…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
A new attempt at measuring the value of health insurance (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 11, 2015
The value of government-provided health insurance in the United States is surprisingly hard to calculate. Researchers can’t use market prices as a measurement of the value of health insurance to…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Why has the U.S. labor force participation rate declined? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 10, 2015
Interpreting movements in the unemployment rate amid the continuing recovery from the Great Recession can be tricky. The share of people with or looking for a job—a measure known as…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Understanding changes in movement on the U.S. job ladder (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 9, 2015
The recent increase in workers quitting their jobs sparked hope that the labor market is healing, with strong wage growth around the corner. But how exactly does the willingness, and…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A partial defense of gross domestic product (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 8, 2015
Gross domestic product is simultaneously an overly hyped and overly maligned statistic. While reports of the quarterly GDP reports get play in the financial press, some researchers claim that the…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Waiting for healthy U.S. wage growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 5, 2015
The U.S. Federal Reserve should take a very close look at the latest jobs numbers released today as it contemplates when to begin raising interest rates. Job growth continued apace…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Education, housing, and U.S. economic inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 4, 2015
State and local property taxes are critical to the funding of U.S. public schools. This means that wealthy areas with high property values can generate ample revenue to fund their…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Job losses, recessions and the U.S. labor market moving forward (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 3, 2015
The official unemployment rate has been on the decline for several years now—surely a good sign, right? Yet the current near 5-percent rate masks lingering damage in the labor market…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What explains the decline in U.S. public corporations? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 2, 2015
The stock market and the health of publicly traded companies are often treated as key indicators of the state of the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hits a…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Is rising U.S. income inequality due to inequality inside individual firms? (opens in a new tab)
Essays JUN 1, 2015
Hear the moniker “the one percent” in the context of income inequality, and you will most likely envision a senior corporate executive. There’s a reason for this immediate association—the rise…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
What to make of slow 1st quarter U.S. economic growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 29, 2015
With the caveat that discerning a pattern off of one report using one data series for one quarter can be risky, here are several options for what this report might…
By: Casey Schoeneberger
Must-Read: Peter Gosselin: Government Austerity Exacts Toll on U.S. Jobs, Wages and Growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 28, 2015
Must-Read: Peter Gosselin: Over at Bloomberg, Peter Gosselin points out the costs of contractionary fiscal policy during the current recovery: If federal, state and local governments were cutting taxes, increasing…
The continuing investigation into the U.S. housing bubble (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 28, 2015
As a general rule, the larger and more important an event, the longer it takes to sort out its causes. It’s been close to nine years since the bursting of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Bonuses, wages, and U.S. compensation growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 27, 2015
Receiving a bonus check is definitely a pleasant experience even if it’s not always a surprise. Getting an extra bump up in pay in December can be a great way…
By: Casey Schoeneberger
What about commuting to new economic opportunities? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 21, 2015
The news has been teeming with a new economic buzzword: neighborhoods. Okay, it’s neither new nor unique to economic argot, but a recent study makes the case that good neighborhoods…
By: Casey Schoeneberger
New insights into U.S. public perceptions of income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 20, 2015
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth and the Yale Institute for Social and Policy Studies co-sponsored a closed-door event earlier this month where academics from a variety of disciplines discussed…
By: Jessica Fulton (opens in a new tab)
Shifting through the implications of the Beveridge Curve (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 18, 2015
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last week released new data from its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. The data set gives us information on…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How exactly do we measure U.S. economic well-being? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 14, 2015
The Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business from time to time will release the results of a survey that poses statements to prominent…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Looking for the roots of total factor productivity growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 13, 2015
To paraphrase the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, productivity isn’t everything when it comes to economic growth; it’s the only thing. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but economists…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Do states’ tax policies cause U.S. employees to earn less and employers to earn more? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 11, 2015
There are many economic theories about why overall income has moved away from income earned through labor and towards capital, such as stocks and bonds. Economics columnist Robert Samuelson notes…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Weak wage growth continues apace (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 8, 2015
The U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in April, after downward revisions brought the prior month to only 85,000 jobs. Over the last three months the economy has on average added…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Thinking about inequality before taxes and transfers (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 7, 2015
Trying to disentangle the causes and the current state of income inequality in the United States can be a tricky enterprise. Take what economists refer to as the distribution of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of where you live for U.S. economic mobility (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 6, 2015
Robust intergenerational economic mobility is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of the United States. Yet economic research conducted over the past several years—and then revisited in a…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of addressing the U.S. racial and ethnic wealth gap (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 5, 2015
Last week, economists, advocates, and organizers from across the country joined each other at the Center for Global Policy Solutions’ Color of Wealth Summit to examine wealth inequality and economic…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
A post-May Day analysis of U.S. income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAY 4, 2015
May Day celebrations kicked off around the world late last week, with unionists in many countries decrying the rise of income inequality in their countries. The United States, of course,…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The merits and limits of “college for the masses” (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 30, 2015
The relative importance of education and skills to the rise in U.S. economic inequality is a widely debated issue. One of the questions at the core of this debate is…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What does weak U.S. economic growth in first quarter mean for the current recovery? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 29, 2015
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning released data showing the annual growth rate of gross domestic product was 0.2 percent during the first three months of 2015. This…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
New John Bates Clark winner takes policy-relevant research very seriously (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 28, 2015
What makes a U.S. primary or secondary school successful? Traditionally, education policy has focused on factors such as teachers’ advanced degrees and training, the class size, aRnd spending per pupil.…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The problem of too much stuff sloshing around the global economy (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 27, 2015
Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. Right now, in the global economy, there appears to be far more commodities available than current demand merits. This glut…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Monopsony and market power in the labor market (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 24, 2015
We’ve all heard the term “monopoly,” even if it’s just in the context of the board game. But a related term, or even another face of monopoly, is monopsony. A…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Borrowing from 401(k) plans and the risks of default (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 23, 2015
Given the signs of a mounting retirement savings problem in the United States, should policy encourage borrowing from savings for the future?
By: Casey Schoeneberger
What explains rising wealth inequality? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 22, 2015
At the University of Chicago, where I went to graduate school, they sell a t-shirt that says “that’s all well and good in practice, but how does it work in…
By: Marshall Steinbaum (opens in a new tab)
Index funds, inequality, and competition among firms (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 21, 2015
Mutual funds with assets that mirror the composition of large market indices or industries, known as index funds, are widely hailed as a positive financial development. They offer a single…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
What is the right size and purpose of the U.S. financial system? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 20, 2015
The U.S. financial services industry weathered plenty of criticism in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, a natural reaction considering the roles played by different financial institutions in inflating…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Breaking down the decline in the U.S. labor share of income (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 17, 2015
Understanding why the share of income going to labor is on the decline—a phenomenon stretching back several decades—is an increasingly popular area of economic research. There is some debate as…
The path to more U.S. exports? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 16, 2015
For most of its 80-year existence, the U.S. Export-Import Bank was a government program decidedly out of the spotlight. But over the past several years the bank has been front…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
U.S. firms’ high debt loads amplified the Great Recession (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 15, 2015
One of the dominant narratives of the Great Recession is the important role of U.S. household debt in the intensity and duration of the economic contraction between the end of…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
How to bypass U.S. estate taxes (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 14, 2015
Tomorrow is tax day, which comes amid a burgeoning debate around our annual payments to Uncle Sam. One particular fight has broken out this week over the estate tax— which…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Intangible assets and the labor share of income (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 13, 2015
Here are a few trends that have been going on in the United States over the past several decades: The share of income going to labor has declined. Corporate profits…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
An update on U.S. household debt (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 10, 2015
One positive development since the end of the Great Recession is that consumers seem to have pulled back on accumulating too much credit and debt. The 2000s were a time…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The role of consumption in economic inequality (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 9, 2015
In conversations about economic inequality, the kind of inequality discussed is almost always that of income or wealth. But when it comes to economic wellbeing, wealth and income aren’t the…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
How does job turnover affect U.S. workers’ wellbeing? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 8, 2015
Climbing the income ladder by moving from job to job is incredibly important for workers’ success because job-hopping is the main source of wage and income growth for the broad…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The risks of large capital inflows (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 7, 2015
The “global savings glut” is a hot topic of conversation again among economists and policymakers courtesy of the recent debate between Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers over the sources of…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Are better times coming for U.S. middle-income households? (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 6, 2015
Income growth for middle-income households in the United States hasn’t been stellar in recent years. The income for the median household, or the household in the exact middle of the…
Weak U.S. Employment Gains and Wage Growth (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 3, 2015
At this pace of employment growth, we should expect persistent, healthy wage gains sometime between the second half of next year and the beginning of 2018, perhaps as late as…
By: Casey Schoeneberger
U.S. labor market slack and the path to full employment (opens in a new tab)
Essays APR 2, 2015
After years of economic tumult during the Great Recession and extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve to jumpstart and sustain economic growth, many economists and policymakers are now calling for…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
The future of the global savings glut (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 31, 2015
Just over ten years ago, before he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke gave a speech trying to explain why long-term interest rates weren’t increasing as the Fed…
The effects of risk-sharing for student loans (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 26, 2015
As the amount of student debt in the United States increases and concerns about students default proliferate, policymakers are considering many options for reducing the debt of those seriously in…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
A new era of earnings-led consumption growth? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 25, 2015
After the U.S. housing bubble burst in 2007, many economists and policymakers claimed that the United States could no longer depend upon credit growth to boost consumption and economic growth.…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Looking inside the data-making factory (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 24, 2015
Accessing economic data these days can be almost deceptively easy. A few clicks on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website or a simple search on the St. Louis Federal…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Support for redistribution on the wane among U.S. seniors and African Americans (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 23, 2015
According to long-trusted economic models, when economic inequality increases so too does government redistribution of income. As the average income in an economy pulls away from the median income, more…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The importance of shopping around in the U.S. health insurance market (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 20, 2015
Even well into the age of Google, search can be a difficult activity. Buying a car, looking for a job, or even figuring out the cheapest flight for vacation can…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
Testing the permanent income hypothesis (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 19, 2015
The permanent income hypotheses is one of a class of assumptions that economists make about how people smooth their spending over time. These assumptions predict that people prefer to spread…
By: Bridget Ansel (opens in a new tab)
Are recoveries from financial crises always slow? (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 18, 2015
A form of conventional wisdom has developed in the years since the beginning of the Great Recession about financial crises: When economies go through major systemic failures of their financial…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
The high economic costs of incarceration (opens in a new tab)
Essays MAR 17, 2015
The United States leads the world when it comes to incarceration rates. According to one estimate, there are 2.4 million individuals in U.S. jails or prisons—a massive number that stands…
By: Nick Bunker (opens in a new tab)
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