As companies and consumers adapt to a changing marketplace, jobs are eliminated and new ones are created. Rates at which this happens vary across states and reflect the flexibility of the labor market. More flexible markets are associated with faster growth.

Increased productivity could be the key to preserving robust, noninflationary GDP growth. But what is the best measure of productivity? This Economic Commentary explores the relationship between labor productivity and multifactor productivity, a measure that accounts for factors other than...

An examination of the payment problems that will have to be overcome as the electronic marketplace evolves, including the issues of trust between buyer and seller, security of payment instruments, individual privacy versus law enforcement concerns, and the implications for monetary policy.

A critical look at the report of the National Commission to Ensure a Strong Competitive Airline Industry, including an examination of the current state of the industry and prospects for the future.

Despite the increasing use of credit and debit cards and the emergence of various electronic payment instruments, currency remains king-at least for small-dollar-value transactions. The author examines the Federal Reserve's present role in providing currency and explores the challenges and...

In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. The payments industry has also undergone changes in cost structure with the introduction of new...

Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a...

We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms, consistent over...