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The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of investment in education on U.S. economic growth. Education is treated as an investment in human capital, since benefits accrue to an educated individual over a lifetime of activities. One of the most important benefits is higher income from labor market participation. This is the key to understanding the link between investment in education and economic growth. Our most important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the growth of the U.S. economy during the postwar period. Educational investment will continue to predominate in the investment requirements for more rapid growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A random walk with drift is a good univariate representation of US GDP. This paper shows, however, that US economic downturns have been associated with predictable short-term recoveries and with changes in long-term GDP forecasts that are substantially smaller than the initial drop. To detect these predictable changes, it is important to use a multivariate time series model. We discuss reasons why univariate representations can miss key characteristics of the underlying variable such as predictability, especially during recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new economic geography (NEG) has become a mainstay of regional science in the last two decades, as signified by the awarding of Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize. Yet, most American regional scientists and urban/regional economists do not use NEG in determining regional growth patterns. Instead, they rely on factors such as natural amenity migration, whose roots lie back to the work of Philip Graves in the mid 1970s. Conversely, two of the world's leading economic geographers – Allen Scott and Michael Storper – have strongly argued that job availability not household amenities have determined US regional dynamics. Given the disparity of views over the largest developed economy in the world, we hold a competition to determine which of these leading contenders accurately predict US interregional growth dynamics over the last 40–60 years. The runaway winner of the duel is natural amenity led growth with the crown going to Graves. Implications are drawn for both empirical research and EU economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents commentary on the address "Long-Term Trends in the Financing of Regulated Industries, 1870-1950," by Melville J. Ulmer, "Trends in Capital Formation and Financing in Agriculture," by Alvin S. Tostlebee, and Sergei Dobrovolsky's "Capital Formation and Financing Trends in Manufacturing and Mining, 1900-1953," all included within the issue addressing the development of the U.S. capital market. The application of the historical data to the development of other countries is discussed, outlining implications of U.S. economic history on general financial theory.

To understand consumers' investment decisions, national surveys such as the Health and Retirement Study elicit consumers' expectations about stock market movements. Analyses of stock market expectations show substantial heterogeneity between consumers. It is commonly speculated that this heterogeneity reflects variations in the beliefs underlying consumers' stock market expectations, that is, their 'mental models.' In an online survey of American adults, we find that consumers think about different economic and political issues when generating stock market expectations for the next year. Regardless of the specific issues on which consumers focused, however, their assessments of the issues seemed to reflect a single underlying perception of changes in economic conditions. Regression analyses show that variation in stock market expectations is related to consumers' overall assessments of economic developments. We discuss the implications of these results for economic surveys and investment communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate that the UK has a relatively large output gap of around 2¾% of potential output. With the legacy of the financial crisis fading, the UK should see healthy growth in potential output of around 2.1% a year from 2015-24. Usually this would drive a period of strong economic growth, but we expect GDP growth to average a relatively underwhelming 2.4% a year over this period, largely due to the drag from aggressive fiscal consolidation., There is significant disagreement amongst economists about the size of the output gap. Estimation of the output gap has been problematic since the financial crisis because of the depth of the recession and relatively slow pace of the subsequent recovery, while sizeable revisions to the national accounts data have been an added complication. Our estimate of the output gap is towards the top of the range of independent forecasters surveyed by HM Treasury, but it is consistent with the literature on the impact of financial crises on potential output., We expect potential output growth of 2.1% a year from 2015-24, a faster pace than that seen since the financial crisis, but some way short of the experience of the pre-crisis decade. The shortfall relative to the pre-crisis period is largely due to a smaller contribution from growth in labour supply, which reflects the impact of an ageing population. However, labour is set to make a much stronger contribution to potential output growth in the UK than in most other major European countries over the next decade., The combination of a large output gap and healthy growth in potential output will provide the conditions for firm growth and low inflation over the medium term, with GDP growth expected to average 2.4% a year from 2015 to 2024. Growth could be stronger were it not for the sizeable drag from fiscal consolidation over the next four years and the dampening effect that this will have on activity. This will ensure that the output gap closes very slowly. The government's fiscal plans are heavily influenced by the OBR's view that there is limited scope for stronger growth to drive an improvement in the public finances. But if our view turns out to be correct, it will become apparent that the government has pursued a more austere path than is strictly necessary in order to comply with its fiscal rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This publication presents news and developments related to world economics as of January 2015. Topics discussed include the growth forecasts following the decline in oil prices, the Japanese debt default, an analysis of why the decline in the high yield bond market will not affect the U.S. economy, the potential of Greece for sustainable economic recovery and the performance of some U.S. economic indicators.

Has the progress of output convergence changed within the United States? This article examines the output convergence among U.S. states for the last five decades by making several improvements over the extant literature. By applying a battery of convergence tests designed to capture nonlinear transitional dynamics to real output per worker data (i.e., nominal values deflated by state-level price), we find that output convergence has not been a feature of the continental United States since the 1970s. Instead, output convergence has proceeded among four subgroups within which constituent states have certain characteristics in common. Our regression analysis suggests that state-level characteristics related to technology and human capital play a crucial role in accounting for the formation and composition of convergence clubs, in agreement with the recent theoretical models of growth and development (e.g., Aghion et al. 2009; Gennaioli et al. 2013b). The level of technology, proxied by patents, turns out to be a consistently significant determinant even after controlling for endogeneity, suggesting that frictions in the diffusion of technology and human capital may have led to clustering of states with different levels of productivity. Our results therefore cast doubt on the common view that diffusion of knowledge and technology across state borders is frictionless. ( JEL O47, O51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the predictive power of leading indicators for output growth at horizons up to 1 year. We use the MIDAS regression approach as this allows us to combine multiple individual leading indicators in a parsimonious way and to directly exploit the information content of the monthly series to predict quarterly output growth. When we use real-time vintage data, the indicators are found to have significant predictive ability, and this is further enhanced by the use of monthly data on the quarter at the time the forecast is made. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. economic development in the 19th century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the West. This article presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving these phenomena. The conclusion is that the decrease in transportation costs induced the westward migration, whereas population growth was responsible for the investment in productive land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much of residual wage dispersion can be explained by an absence of coordination among firms? To answer, we construct a dynamic directed search model with identical workers where firms can create high- or low-productivity jobs and are uncoordinated in their offers to workers, calibrated to the U.S. economy. Workers can exploit ex post opportunities once approached by firms, and can conduct on-the-job search. The stationary equilibrium wage distribution is hump-shaped, skewed significantly to the right, and, with baseline parameters, generates residual dispersion statistics 75–90% of those found empirically. However, the model underestimates the average duration of unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates of potential output growth for Australia, the United States and Canada are presented and analysed in this article. We define potential growth as that growth rate consistent with a steady (domestic component of the) inflation rate (SIRG). At around 4 per cent per annum, Australia's SIRG has been relatively stable for the past 30 years, which seems inconsistent with the view that wide-ranging microeconomic reform in the 1990s raised growth potential. However, we show that the reduction in employment growth in Australia from the 1980s to the 1990s may account for the absence of a rise in potential growth. In Canada and the United States the SIRGs are closer to 3 per cent, and we explore the reasons why potential growth estimates are higher for Australia than for North America. We also discuss why Australia's growth averaged less than its potential in the 1980s and 1990s and the possible use of our estimates for monetary policy purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article, Wynne Godley and Bill Martin examine the growing imbalances in the American economy and the threat they pose to continued growth. They argue that America's expansion has been, and, on present policies, will continue to be overly reliant on a rising stock market and falling private net saving. This process is unsustainable. Other countries which have experienced asset price bubbles and abnormally low and falling private saving have all been severely damaged when the process unwound with net savings rising back to and then above their historic norm. Faced with that type of shock, the same fate could easily await the United States unless its policy toward the dollar and the budget responded in a quite remarkable fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on an article titled "Investment in Education and U.S. Economic Growth," by D.W. Jorgenson and B.M. Fraumeni. Measurement of investment in human capital; Relationship between measures of schooling quality and subsequent attainment; Output of the educational sector.