Bartik provides evidence showing that investment in quality preschool education provides economic payoffs, particularly in lifetime earnings.

Bartik reviews evidence on whether state and local policies affect job growth. He then presents empirical data supporting the intentions of such programs, showing that job growth may lead to a number of positive long-term effects including: lower unemployment, higher labor force participation,...

Early childhood programs, if designed correctly, pay big economic dividends down the road because they increase the skills of their participants. And since many of those participants will remain in the same state or local area as adults, the local economy benefits: more persons with better...

Leading Policy analysts examine the challenges facing U.S. labor market policy and propose concrete steps to make American workers and employers more competitive in a global economy.

Sass discusses the evolution of the U.S. Railroad Retirement System and whether its ability to invest its assets in private equities offers answers for the long-term fiscal health of Social Security.

The share of Americans with defined contribution pension plans now exceeds the share of those with defined benefit plans. Wolff refers to this as the "great transformation" and it leads him to examine recent evidence to see whether there are winners and losers resulting from this switch away...

Kleiner examines occupations that are at various stages of regulation to determine to what extent regulation has influenced the individuals in the occupations, consumers, and related occupational practitioners.

Barnow, Trutko, and Piatak focus on whether persistent occupation-specific labor shortages might lead to inefficiencies in the U.S. economy. They describe why shortages arise, the difficulty in ascertaining that a shortage is present, and how to assess strategies to alleviate the shortage.