The accuracy of local unemployment rates published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been questioned because of their heavy reliance on secondary data sources. It has often been suggested that this criticism could be tested if the BLS's survey methodology for determining national rates were...

Emerging high-growth firms create the lion’s share of jobs in the United States. Even though these firms are economically important, policy researchers have not studied them to a great extent. This focus section tries to stimulate interest in the issue by reporting results of cutting-edge...

Policy makers rely on cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to help them select the best policies and projects to alleviate poverty. But CBA, as practiced in the United States, not only fails to inform policy makers about the best use of scarce resources but helps make poverty worse for many people....

Are rural places inferior to urban areas in developing new businesses? Using employment insurance data for Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, and North Dakota, this study found that rural new businesses contribute substantially to job creation; that rural areas are as competitive as urban areas in...

After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly dysfunctiona

This paper presents an overview of the economic issues facing the American economy. Crisis and transformation scenarios are presented and supply-side versus demand-side economic policies are considered as approaches to revitalizing the economy. Issues such as the extent to which centralization...

The failure of US initiatives to build local/regional economic development capacity in Russia following the fall of Communism has been partly blamed on national factors, Russian culture, and American consultants. Much of the failure, however, probably resulted because American approaches to...

The crisis precipitated by the flawed restructuring of California's electric power industry focused national attention on the questin of whether to allow utility companies-highly regulated by government-to operate in a deregulated energy market. This symposium examines the issues involved in...