Claims that the nation has reached full employment take for granted the need for a reserve pool of labor to maintain price stability and labor market flexibility. But are millions of jobless and underemployed workers the best we can do in these times of economic expansion? And what will happen...

Though recent market activity and housing reports give some warrant for optimism, United States economic growth was only 2.2 percent in the third quarter, and the unemployment rate is still very high. In this new Strategic Analysis, we project that high unemployment will continue to be a problem...

The collapse in the subprime mortgage market, along with multiple signals of distress in the broader housing market, has already drawn forth a large body of comment. Some people think the upheaval will turn out to be contagious, causing a major slowdown or even a recession later in 2007. Others...

Can the growth in the U.S. current account deficit be sustained? How does the flow of deficits feed the stock of debt? And how will the burden of servicing this debt affect future deficits and economic growth? These are some of the questions we address in this Strategic Analysis

Levy Institute Strategic Analyses have always stressed the relevance of the linkages between conditions in financial markets and the real economy. In our last Strategic Analysis, we reported a simulation showing a high probability for a recession and an increase in unemployment in 2008,...

The US economy grew reasonably fast during the last quarter of 2010, and the general expectation is that satisfactory growth will continue in 2011-12. The expansion may, indeed, continue into 2013. But with large deficits in both the government and foreign sectors, satisfactory growth in the...

In recent years, the US public debt has grown rapidly, with last fiscal year's deficit reaching nearly $1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, many of the euro nations with large amounts of public debt have come close to bankruptcy and loss of capital market access. The same may soon be true of many US states...

Yet another rescue plan for the European Monetary Union (EMU) is making its way through central Europe, but no one is foolish enough to believe that it will be enough. Greece's finance minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt, and hinted that a 50 percent...