Steindel's paper focuses on the interaction of tax and transfer programs and consumer spending. The issue has attracted increased attention in the United States as a result of simultaneity of the first US recession in a decade and of the 2001 tax cut. Steindel points out that while the US...

Gross domestic product's high correlation with unemployment and inflation makes it a key measure of the U.S. economy. Yet the somewhat arbitrary nature of the GDP construction process complicates interpretation and measurement of the indicator. A study of an alternative measure of GDP designed...

Economists, business analysts, and policymakers have all focused considerable attention on U.S. productivity growth in recent years. This paper presents a broad overview of productivity both labor and total factor and discusses why it is such an important topic. We begin with the official U.S....

Despite posting their strongest sustained performance in many years, recent measures of output and productivity growth have still fallen short of their 1960-73 averages. Could data-measurement problems affecting the pricing of some services account for the inability of these widely tracked U.S....