An examination of why, in the face of record earnings and ever-increasing demand for their products and services, banks are trimming their payrolls. The article also examines the fate of the job losers, as well as the banking industry's tremendous ability to weather major technological and...

In February 1994, the FOMC began a new era in transparency, gradually building a communications apparatus that conveys information about the Committee’s decisions and expectations. Has the new apparatus improved the public’s ability to predict FOMC interest rate decisions? New research based...

When people call the dot-com boom a bubble, they imply that investors based their decisions on something other than a good estimate of the future value of the assets theywere buying. But some economists say that is not likely because episodes like the dot-com bust show future value is not always...

The principle of purchasing power parity is central to the theoretical underpinnings of the analysis of many trade issues, but up until recently, there was little evidence that PPP held in the long run. Current research has changed that. The key to finding the evidence was realizing how to test...

Treasury inflation-indexed securities are just like nominal Treasuries, except that their coupon and principal payments are indexed to inflation. The yield spread between the two types of securities should serve as a daily measurement of the market's perception of expected inflation, modified to...

We're used to hearing analysts make predictions about where the economy is headed based on changes in the prices people are paying for stocks, futures, or other assets. Now, recent research is showing how we can analyze the prices of sophisticated new investment products, like options, to also...

Are asset prices climbing too far too fast? Do they signal the approach of an unsustainable boom that the FOMC should step in and stop before it gathers speed? Bubbles are notoriously hard to spot beforehand, and even if we were better at it, no one is sure what the best monetary policy response...

An analysis of wage adjustments for hourly employees in the mid-1980s, finding that workers whose wages change often are likely to see larger fluctuations and those whose wages change infrequently tend to see smaller movements, and concluding that wage flexibility is in fact pervasive in the...

New models of monetary economies, developed in the last 15 years, suggest that traditional measures of the welfare cost of inflation may underestimate the true loss that inflation inflicts on society. According to these models, the cost of 10 percent inflation ranges from 1 to 5 percent of real...