State budget crises: cause and effect

State finance ; Finance, Public

Aggregated vs. disaggregated data in regression analysis: implications for inference

This note demonstrates why regression coefficients and their statistical significance differ across degrees of data aggregation. Given the frequent use of aggregated data to explain individual behavior, data aggregation can result in misleading conclusions regarding the economic behavior of individuals.Econometrics ; Regression analysis

The rise in personal bankruptcies: the Eighth Federal Reserve District and beyond

Personal bankruptcy filings in the United States increased, per capita, nearly 350 percent between 1980 and 2005. This paper first addresses the changes in economic and institutional factors that have occurred over the past 100 years, many of which have occurred in the past 30 years, which are likely contributors to the dramatic rise in personal bankruptcy filings seen across the country. These factors include a reduction in personal savings, an increase in consumer debt, the proliferation of revolving credit, changes to bankruptcy law, and a reduced social stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. Given the availability of bankruptcy data at various levels of aggregation, the remaining sections of the paper contain results from several different empirical analyses of bankruptcy filings using various data sets. Careful attention is paid to personal bankruptcy filings in counties located in Eighth Federal Reserve District states.Bankruptcy ; Finance, Personal ; Federal Reserve District, 8th

Editor's introduction

Finance, Public ; Fiscal policy

Casino gaming and local employment trends

Casino gambling has become a major industry in the United States. Economic development, especially through increases in employment, is the primary justification for casino development in a local area. This article estimates the employment effects of casino gambling for six counties in the Midwest and southern United States using ARIMA forecasting models. The results suggest that rural counties that adopt casino gambling as a major industry experience significant gains in payroll and household employment. The effects are less pronounced in urban counties, partly due to the higher volatility of their employment data relative to those of rural counties.Gambling industry ; Employment (Economic theory)

Saving for a rainy day?

State finance ; Budget deficits

Taxing electronic commerce: boon or boondoggle?

Electronic commerce ; Taxation

Income mobility

Income inequality statistics ignore temporal changes in household income.Income ; Households

A Federal Reserve System conference on research in applied microeconomics

This article summarizes papers presented at the System Applied Microeconomics Conference organized and hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on May 5-6, 2011. This annual conference brings together economists from the Federal Reserve District Banks across the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Board to present their latest economic research.Microeconomics

War and pestilence as labor market shocks: manufacturing wage growth 1914-1919

This paper explores the effect of mortalities from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and World War I on real wage growth in the manufacturing sectors of U.S. states from 1914 to 1919. The general hypothesis is that both events caused a significant decrease in the supply of manufacturing labor, thereby initially increasing the marginal product of labor and thus wages. The empirical results reveal that influenza mortalities led to a greater overall increase in real manufacturing wage growth, but the marginal effect on wage growth from an additional World War I combat mortality was greater than that from the influenza pandemic.Wages ; Manufacturing industries