The Chicago Fed held a series of conferences in 2003–04 aimed at understanding the recent poor performance of the manufacturing sector in the Midwest and the nation and identifying the challenges that lie ahead.

This article estimates the extent to which the manufacturing sectors of U.S. metropolitan economies face competition from abroad and, in turn, how much they export overseas.

This article documents changes in the spatial distribution of corporate headquarters of large U.S.-domiciled corporations during the 1990s. The authors find that the largest metropolitan areas continue to host a disproportionate share of headquarters, but there have been significant shifts...