Your current job probably won't be your last

Employment

Extra credit: the rise of short-term liabilities

Not only are more American families in debt, but the median value of the debt more than doubled between 1989 and 2004. Credit cards and payday loans are two of the favorite tools for digging the hole deeper.Credit

Business cycle measures

Business cycle measures can provide timely statistical evidence of turning points.Business cycles

When do recessions begin and end?

With the funds rate driven to levels far below its target, the FOMC had no recourse but to adjust the target accordingly.Recessions

A journal ranking for the ambitious economist

The authors devise an "ambition-adjusted" journal ranking based on citations from a short list of top general-interest journals in economics. Underlying this ranking is the notion that an ambitious economist wishes to be acknowledged not only in the highest reaches of the profession, but also outside his or her subfield. In addition to the conceptual advantages that they find in their ambition adjustment, they see two main practical advantages: greater transparency and a consistent treatment of subfields. They compare their 2008 ranking based on citations from 2001 to 2007 with a ranking for 2002 based on citations from 1995 to 2001.Research ; Economics ; Economists

Not your father's oil shock

Factors other than changes in oil supply may cause changes in oil prices.Petroleum products - Prices

Can a summer hike cause a surprise fall for mortgage rates?

Federal funds rate ; Mortgages ; Interest rates

Look who's still working now

Labor supply ; Retirement ; Labor market

The effects of recessions across demographic groups

The burdens of a recession are not spread evenly across demographic groups. As the public and media noticed, from the start of the current recession in December 2007 through June 2009 men accounted for more than three-quarters of net job losses. Other differences have garnered less attention but are just as interesting. During the same period, the employment of single people fell at more than twice the rate that it did for married people and the decline for black workers was one and a half times that for white workers. To provide a more complete understanding of the effect of recessions, this paper examines the different effects of this and previous recessions across a range of demographic categories: sex, marital status, race, age, and education level.Recessions ; Demography

Hard 'core' inflation

Inflation (Finance)