This paper analyzes and compares the decisions communities made in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to determine to what extent post-Katrina comprehensive plans promote resilience based on built environment factors that have been shown to improve social networking, physical safety, and...

Since the early 1990s, metropolitan entities and local governments have targeted incentives, policies, and investments with the goal of highly educated and skilled workers to locate in their communities. These efforts focus on attracting workers who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher and have...

This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that incorporate unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches–the more reduced-form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the...

We describe and evaluate the measures taken by the U.S. government to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008. We begin by outlining the business model of these two firms and their role in the U.S. housing finance system. Our focus then turns to the sources of financial distress that...

Stress testing has recently become a critical risk management and capital planning tool for large financial institutions and their supervisors around the world. However, the one prior U.S. experience tying stress test results to capital requirements was a spectacular failure: the Office of...

Beginning in 1864, in the United States notes of national banks were the predominant medium of exchange. Each national bank issued its own notes. E-money shares many of the characteristics of these bank notes. This paper describes some lessons relevant to e money from the U.S. experience with...

In the United States prior to 1863, each bank issued its own distinct notes. E-money shares many of the characteristics of these bank notes. This paper describes some lessons relevant to e-money from the U.S. experience with state bank notes. It examines historical evidence on how well the bank...

This paper characterizes jointly optimal default and exchange-rate policy in a small open economy with limited enforcement of debt contracts and downward nominal wage rigidity. Under optimal policy, default occurs during contractions and is accompanied by large devaluations. The latter inflate...

Adams, Blackburn, and Cotti (ABC) found that increases in minimum wages were positively related to drunk driving–related traffic fatalities for those ages 16 to 20. The hypothesized mechanism for this relationship—increased alcohol consumption caused by minimum wage–induced income...

Having efficient and accurate samplers for simulating the posterior distribution is crucial for Bayesian analysis. We develop a generic posterior simulator called the "dynamic striated Metropolis-Hastings (DSMH)" sampler. Grounded in the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, it draws its strengths from...