Economic Commentary
Providing you with in-depth analysis of current economic and financial issues.
1996
- December 1996
- Monetary policy and real economic growth
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- November 1996
- Combining Bank Supervision and Monetary Policy
- In the United States, the Federal Reserve has responsibility for both monetary policy and bank supervision. Other countries separate these functions to varying degrees. What lies behind this global diversity? Should a central bank be charged with conducting monetary policy and regulating banks, or does it make more sense - both economic and political - to keep these activities separate? The answer is not a simple yes or no. Rather, it appears that the right choice depends on a country&rquo;s prevailing conditions, including its financial system, its political environment, and the preferences of the public. Read more
- October 15, 1996
- Competing Currencies: Back to the Future?
- A look at how episodes of competing currencies can provide insight on 1) the qualities of a commodity that lead to its becoming a dominant currency, 2) the route by which a nationally mandated paper currency becomes acceptable as a medium of exchange, and 3) the way in which competition between currencies sustains the exchange value of a fiat currency by restricting the actions available to the monetary authority. Read more
- October 1, 1996
- Jobs Creation and Government Policy
- An argument by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Jerry Jordan that the proper focal point of public policy is not creating jobs but creating wealth, thus allowing for the highest standard of living. Read more
- September 15, 1996
- The Functions and Future of Retail Banking
- A look at the future of the retail banking industry by the president of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank. President Jordan explains that as technology and deregulation transform the financial marketplace, it will be critical to understand the services that people desire and to explore banks’ comparative advantages in supplying them. Read more
- September 1, 1996
- Reducing Working Hours: American Workers? Salvation?
- An examination of the basic rationale behind policies intended to reduce the standard workweek, and an explanation of why these policies are likely to be less effective at boosting employment than proponents claim. Read more
- August 15, 1996
- Discrimination in Mortgage Lending: What Have We Learned?
- A retrospective on the debate over the presence of discrimination in the residential mortgage market, examining some of the evidence that’s been gathered since the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published its groundbreaking (1992) study concluding that minority applicants were over 50 percent more likely to be denied a home loan than whites. Read more
- August 1, 1996
- Inflation targets: the next step for monetary policy
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- July 1996
- Interest rate rules for seasonal and business cycles
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- June 1996
- Welfare Reform and the Cyclicality of Welfare Programs
- An examination of how potential welfare recipients would be affected by reform proposals calling for a reduction in benefits and a shift in fiscal responsibility from the federal government to the states, emphasizing the sometimes substantial impact of business cycle swings on welfare caseloads and expenditures. Read more
- May 15, 1996
- The Credit Union Industry---An Overview
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- May 1, 1996
- A Simple Proposal for Privatizing Social Security
- An argument that shifting to a privatized, funded, and contribution-based Social Security system could provide undiminished benefits to current retirees while simultaneously preserving the promise of a secure retirement for today’s workers and their descendants. Read more
- April 15, 1996
- Where is all the U.S. currency hiding?
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- April 1, 1996
- The Future of Banking Supervision
- A prediction by Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Jerry Jordan that bank regulatory agencies will change the way they supervise banks in the coming years, making greater use of market forces to discipline individual banks? behavior, and paying more attention to the functioning of the financial system as a whole. Read more
- March 15, 1996
- State employment 1995: slowing to a recession?
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- March 1, 1996
- Are Successful Interventions Random Events?
- An examination of the Federal Reserve’s intervention successes in the late 1980s, showing that, although the characteristic day-to-day fluctuations in exchange rates virtually ensured that a large share of these interventions would appear successful - purely by chance and even in the absence of a causal link - the number of successes proved larger than pure randomness would suggest. Read more
- February 15, 1996
- Glass-Steagall and the Regulatory Dialectic
- An explanation of how the Glass-Steagall Act, passed to prohibit U.S. commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities, has led to the same costly cat-and-mouse game between banks and their regulators as did the prohibition against interstate banking, and an argument that lawmakers should consider banks’ incentives when crafting new regulations. Read more
- February 1, 1996
- Mortgage interest deductibility and housing prices
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- January 15, 1996
- Making sense of the federal budget impasse
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- January 1, 1996
- Social security: are we getting our money’s worth?
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