Recent empirical work documents a decline in the U.S. equity premium and a decline in the standard deviation of real output growth. We investigate the link between aggregate risk and the asset returns in a dynamic production based asset-pricing model. When calibrated to match asset return...

There is a widespread belief that different geographic regions of the U.S. respond differently to economic shocks, perhaps because of factors such as differences in the composition of regional output, adjustment costs, or other frictions. The author investigates the comovement of regional...

Finally, we look at the broader picture to determine why the U.S. economy has had fewer and shorter recessions over the past 20 years. Over time, swings in the growth of many macroeconomic variables, such as gross domestic product, have become smaller. Why this decline in economic volatility? In...

Recessions usually mean bad times for many workers and firms: companies close; jobs are lost. However, recessions can present certain opportunities for organizations. For example, restructuring can be less costly during a recession: workers can be retrained and machines upgraded. In turn, these...

Cyclical dynamics at the regional level are investigated using newly developed times-series techniques that allow a decomposition of aggregate data into common trends and common cycles. The authors apply the common-trend/common-cycle representation to per capita personal income for the eight BEA...

Interest rates change in response to a variety of economic events, such as changes in Fed policy, crises in financial markets, and changes in prospects for long-term economic growth and inflation. But such events are sporadic, and interest rates show a more regular pattern of volatility that...