Source: pdb1Only about one in ten students from low-income families earns a bachelor's degree by age 25, while roughly half of students from high-income families do. This gap persists even among students with similar academic abilities, suggesting that factors beyond preparation play a significant role. In a paper in the American Economi...
Source: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential LibraryWhen the economy weakens, central banks respond by lowering interest rates to encourage borrowing and spending. But recent large downturns, such as the Great Recession and Japan’s Long Recession, have highlighted a major limitation of this tool—the zero lower bound. In such extreme circumstances, the ...
Source: WoodysPhotosBetween 1997 and 2011, opioid dispensing in the United States more than tripled, fueling what would become the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. This surge in the supply of opioids was concentrated among a small subset of doctors: roughly 1 percent of the doctors who prescribed opioids accounted for almost 50 percent of all d...
Source: REDPIXEL.PLIn December 2013, when Congress failed to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, many prominent economists predicted a substantial decline in employment and labor force participation. In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, authors Marcus Hagedorn, Io...
Source: l i g h t p o e tIt is generally accepted that the housing boom and bust of the 2000s was a key factor leading to the Great Recession. But economists have struggled to reach a consensus on the role that credit availability played in driving house prices during this period. Some researchers have argued that loosened credit standards, such as mortgag...
Source: Elchin JavadovIn March 2002, under pressure from the steel industry, President George W. Bush imposed tariffs ranging from 8 to 30 percent on over 170 steel products. The policy was intended to protect American steel producers from foreign competition. In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors James L...
NASA engineers discuss the Apollo project.Source: NASA Glenn Research Center, Public domainThe launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957 led to a geopolitical crisis that reshaped American science policy. Within months, Congress established NASA, and by 1961, President Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon before the decade&...
Life cycle profiles of wages help shed light on the economic progress of women relative to men.Source: casezyThe gender wage gap narrowed dramatically from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, with women's wages converging toward those of men across all income levels. Then progress stalled, and despite continued advances in women's education and wo...
How has women's labor force participation shaped America's business cycles?Source: David Bedard, Public domainThe Great Moderation, characterized by reduced economic volatility beginning in the 1980s, and the emergence of jobless recoveries following the 1990 recession have attracted considerable scholarly attention. Prior research h...
How did the rollout of broadcast television during the mid-twentieth century affect labor supply decisions in the United States?Source: mavoimagesShortly after its commercial debut, television began to claim a central position in American leisure time. This transformation was one of the most significant changes in American time use to occur during the twen...
