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Publications (37)
State per capita income differences narrowed considerably between 1939 and 1976. However, this convergence has been incomplete. We examined the sources of relative per capita income growth using an augmented growth model and a panel of the 48 contiguous states from 1939 to 2004. We explored the effect of tax burdens, public infrastructure, size of...
As companies and consumers adapt to a changing marketplace, jobs are eliminated and new ones are created. Rates at which this happens vary across states and reflect the flexibility of the labor market. More flexible markets are associated with faster growth.
In gauging the health of state economies, arguably the two most important series to track are employment and output. While employment by state is available about three weeks after the end of a month, data on output, as measured by Gross State Product (GSP), are only available annually and with a significant lag. This Policy Discussion Paper details...
Even as per capita income has increased across the United States, differences among states’ incomes remain. What are the sources of these remaining differences? This Commentary identifies and analyzes the key factors—patents, educational attainment, and industry structure—that influence income-growth rates and thus per capita incomes. It also explo...
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...
According to a study featured in the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's 2005 Annual Report, differences in state income levels can be explained largely by two factors: innovation and workforce skills. The study's findings suggest that increasing a region's knowledge base should be a primary component of economic development strategies.
Labor productivity growth, a measure of output per unit of work, is closely tied to gains in wages and living standards, and it provides a direct measure of a country’s competitive position over time. The same holds true for states. Since the last business cycle peak in 2000, states boosted their average labor productivity growth to 2.3 percent. In...
In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. In this paper, we estimate scale economies, scope economies, and technical change in the Federal Reserve's provision of payments processing from 1990 to 20...
In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. The payments industry has also undergone changes in cost structure with the introduction of new technology. Unfortunately, data on the private provision of...
In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. The payments industry has also undergone changes in cost structure with the introduction of new technology. Unfortunately, data on the private provision of...
This Economic Commentary confirms that productivity growth has been unusually robust over the last few years and explores reasonable assumptions about the likely future pattern of productivity growth. These assumptions can generate substantially different productivity growth paths. Government forecasts, which guide the major tax and benefit program...
Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a measure of the responsiveness of ACH demand to price chan...
In this paper, we analyze the service provided by the 13 largest U.S. passenger airlines to the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas in 1989. We classify the route systems by their nature and geographic scope using a variety of measures based on route-level data. We then identify individual airline hub locations; derive and calculate several m...
We propose a set of consistency conditions which frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms, consistent over time and with competitive conditions in the market, and...
We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms; consistent over time and with competitive conditions in the market; and...
Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper, we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a measure of the responsiveness of ACH demand to price cha...
This paper uses a stochastic cost frontier to examine the scale economies, cost efficiencies, and technological change of three payment instruments (check, ACH, and Fedwire processing) provided by the Federal Reserve over the period 1990-94. The authors find evidence of substantial scale economies and cost inefficiencies in the ACH and Fedwire serv...
We briefly review the rationale behind technological alliances and provide a snapshot of their role in global competition, especially insofar as it is based around intellectual capital. They nicely illustrate the increased importance of horizontal agreements and thus establish the relevance of the topic. We move on to discuss the organisation of in...
An analysis of the contribution of scale economies, technological change, and falling input prices to the absolute reduction in the real processing costs of an ACH transfer over the 1979-94 period.
An exploration of the effectiveness of testing procedures in uncovering discrimination by mortgage lenders, reflecting perceived shortcomings in the scope of data provided by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which indicates that the rejection rate for black mortgage applicants is much higher than for whites. The authors find that for plausible lev...
This work focuses on measuring and explaining producer performance. The contributors to this volume view performance as a function of the state of technology and economic efficiency. They show that insights can be gained by allowing for the possibility of a divergence between the economic objective and actual performance, and by associating this in...
We examine the efficiency and productivity of check processing offices of the Federal Reserve System using a variety of frontier estimation techniques. Although there is broad agreement among the techniques about the relative efficiency rankings of offices, the average level of efficiency varies considerably depending on the technique chosen. Simil...
An examination of the cost of providing check-processing services at 47 Federal Reserve offices between 1983:1Q and 1990:IVQ, demonstrating how the Fed's unit cost measures can be decomposed into separate effects related to differences in cost efficiency, output mix, input prices, and environmental variables.
Although the airline industry has been studied extensively since passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, relatively little effort has gone into examining how hub location affects the level of service and degree of competition found at airports in the system. To help close this gap, we investigate the geographic distribution of airline hub...
A study of the effects of bank structure and profitability on the births of new firms, arguing that local credit markets potentially affect firm location decisions.
A comparison of alternative methods for estimating inefficiency and productivity growth in banking, showing that inefficiencies are sufficiently large to dominate scale economies and that measured technological progress has been small, or even negative, as a result of institutional events that occurred during 1977-88.
A number of techniques have been developed that expand the range of options available to researchers for estimating frontiers. This paper discusses recent developments in the econometric approach to the estimation of stochastic frontiers such as production, costs, and profit functions. Areas requiring further work are also noted.
An examination of the effects of price and availability of credit from commercial lending organizations on the start-up rates of new businesses within specific markets, finding that profitable and competitive banking markets are associated with higher rates of firm births.
Using a model developed to examine the determinants of air fares, the authors discuss the relationship between airline industry competitiveness and fare increases.
A thorough understanding of changes in productivity measures is important to economists and policymakers, because productivity growth is a major source of economic growth. This article explores the relationship between changes in total factor productivity (TFP) growth, defined using an index number approach, and changes in returns to scale, cost ef...
An overview of the airline industry's early adaptations to deregulation using a best-practice cost function approach; measures cost efficiency and changes in total factor productivity growth for airlines in the 1970s and early 1980s and discusses how these findings relate to individual airline performance.
A study of the determinants that influence where airlines establish hubs in the hub-and-spoke networks that developed in the industry, with identification of the quantitative effects of these determinants.
We briefly review the rationale behind technological alliances and provide a snapshot of their role in global competition, especially insofar as it is based around intellectual capital. They nicely illustrate the increased importance of horizontal agreements and thus establish the relevance of the topic. We move on to discuss the organisation of in...
Federal Reserve banks have been processing Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, a consumer oriented product intended to be an electronic substitute for paper checks, since the mid-1970s. Previous studies by Humphrey (1982, 1984, 1985), Bauer and Hancock (1995), and Bauer and Ferrier (1996) have found strong evidence for increasing returns to sc...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1985. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [106]-111). Microfiche of typescript. s