The personal saving rate spiked up to an unusually high level in 2008 and spring 2009, prompting many observers to suggest that the financial crisis has created a new thrift ethic, reversing decades of decline in U.S. saving to near zero. The depth of the recent financial and economic crisis has...

In most of 2005, personal saving was negative, attracting widespread attention and concern. Many analysts suggest that negative personal saving means that the typical U.S. consumer is living well beyond their means. Since this would be unsustainable, the fear is that an end of a consumer...

House prices have risen quite sharply since 2000. Coming on the heels of a stock market crash, many analysts have raised the specter of collapse in house prices and have conjured up dire consequences from such a collapse. This article examines the extent of the house price rise, whether there...

This paper looks at interest rate developments in the US and argues that long-term real interest rates are at lows not seen in the past 50 years. It explores competing hypotheses that there is a global saving glut, there is conundrum or that global capital formation has slowed. The dominant view...

China-bashing has become a popular media and political sport. This is largely due to the U.S. trade imbalance and the belief, by some, that China is responsible for it because it manipulates its currency to hold down the dollar prices of its goods, unfairly creating a trade advantage that has...

Requiring taxes to be paid in domestic money provides a legal tender basis for money demand and hence to the development of a financial system. In emerging markets, the level of taxation is a positive factor boosting financial development. At higher tax rates, however, taxation provides an...

The “Hoosier Comeback” program, sponsored by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, is part of a strategy to boost economic growth, in this case through increasing the quantity and quality of available human resources by providing subsidies to encourage the return of former residents....

The U.S. manufacturing sector has become the poster child of the jobless recovery, the latest victim of the Bubble Economy. On Labor Day 2003 President Bush called for the creation of a new position of Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing in the Department of Commerce. The National Association...

Some analysts have argued that bubble excesses of the late-1990s led to excessive real investment, and that an important consequence was that capital formation has been depressed since then, as firms have let production catch up with the excessive capital stock. While this description broadly...

The “Hoosier Comeback” program, sponsored by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, is part of a strategy to boost economic growth, in this case through increasing the quantity and quality of available human resources by providing subsidies to encourage the return of former residents....