This paper provides a review of the literature on U.S. central city growth and distress during the second half of the twentieth century. It finds that city growth tended to be higher in metropolitan areas with favorable weather, higher growth, and greater human capital, while distress was...

As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's commitment to supporting efforts to revitalize the economy of Springfield, Massachusetts, this paper explores the causes of and potential remedies for the city's low resident employment rates. When compared to the state as a whole and to other...

As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's commitment to supporting efforts to revitalize the economy of Springfield, Massachusetts, this paper analyzes the economic development approaches of other mid-sized manufacturing-oriented cities during the past half century. From among a comparison...

The Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston sponsored a new conference, “Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice: How and Why Do Consumers Choose Their Payment Methods?” on October 27–28, 2005, at the Boston Fed. The conference brought together a diverse...

A considerable literature examines the optimal decumulation of financial wealth in retirement. We extend this line of research to incorporate housing, which comprises the majority of most households’ non-pension wealth. ; We estimate the relationship between the returns on housing, stocks, and...

This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 25–27, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts — the private-sector payments...

This study’s underlying premise is that current pension plan accounting has two important negative effects. First, it distorts the measurement of earnings and net worth in the short run, as well as the pattern of earnings over future periods. Second, this distortion can send incorrect signals...

How much should a family save for retirement and for the kids’ college education? How much insurance should they buy? How should they allocate their portfolio across different assets? What should a company choose as the default asset allocation for a mandatory retirement saving plan? We...

Most young households simultaneously hold both unsecured debt on which they pay an average of 10 percent interest and social security wealth on which they earn less than 2 percent. We document this fact using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We then consider a life-cycle model with...

This paper summarizes and outlines some interesting issues that arose during a recent workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) on July 25, 2008. Topics addressed are the consumer adoption of new...