The federal tax liabilities of different income groups change constantly in response to new tax laws and shifting economic circumstances. For example, in recent years, Congress has lowered individual income tax rates, increased child and dependent care credits, and reduced taxes on dividends and...

In the wake of the Great Recession there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who indicate they want a job, but are not actively seeking one. This group, on the periphery of the labor market, may be viewed as a "shadow labor supply." Since they are not actively seeking work, they are...

The nature of the business cycle, particularly in the United States, has changed dramatically over the past several decades. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. economy often whipsawed up and down. Since then, real economic activity stabilized considerably, entering a period economists call...

After rising substantially during the Great Recession, the U.S. federal budget deficit has narrowed the past few years. While policy reforms and cyclical economic recovery have certainly contributed to this improvement, an array of temporary factors such as Federal Reserve remittances, dividends...

Despite the apparent risk that financial stress poses to the real economy, the relationship between financial stress and economic activity is complex and not well understood. The experience of the United States and other countries has shown that businesses and households often pull back on new...

Monetary policy analysts looking for a model on which to base decisions may consider two popular approaches-the New Keynesian (NK) and the identified vector autoregression (VAR) approaches. Choosing between the two can be difficult: NK models are stylized and have simple rules while structural...

Business news often gives the impression that the effects of monetary policy on the macroeconomy are well understood and predictable. The author of this article, however, believes that, far from sharing such certainty, policymakers and economists alike have knowledge limited by difficulties in...