T HE index numbers of prices here presented in monthly form for the period I795 to I824 were constructed as a part of a study of the financial history of the United States during and immediately following the War of i8I2.1 To students of international trade, government finance, and money, banking, and prices, the developments of a hundred years ago are of interest because of the similarity between that period and the recent war and post-war period. It is hoped that the index numbers of commodity prices at wholesale may be of service to students of the history of these years. Such series provide a continuous record around which non-quantitative data may be organized, and, being sensitive barometers of economic life, they enable us to say something concerning the timing and the magnitude of the effect of the forces at work. A description of the construction of the indexes of prices in the United States from I795 to I824 is given in Part I below. Three indexes of prices in the Boston marketone of the prices of domestically produced goods, one of imported goods, and one of domes'tically produced and imported goods (the all commodities index) have been computed by months for the 30 years. In this section also indexes of prices of domestic goods quoted in the markets of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, from i8io to I8I9, are presented. In Part II the index numbers for the years i802-2o,have been examined to find out when business recessions and crises occurred, and some non-statistical material has been quoted which helps to explain the movements of prices in this period. Our conclusions concerning the causes of fluctuations in prices must necessarily be tentative, for the data upon which our judgment must be based are fragmentary.

By the end of 2019, U.S. output was 14% below the level predicted by its pre-2008 trend. To understand why, I develop and estimate a model of the United States with demographics, real and monetary shocks, and the occasionally binding zero lower bound on nominal rates. Demographic shocks generate slow-moving trends in interest rates, employment, and productivity. Demographics alone can explain about 40% of the gap between log output per capita and its linear trend by 2019. By lowering interest rates, demographic changes caused the zero lower bound to bind after the Great Recession, contributing to the slow recovery.

Abstrac-t-This paper gathers evidence on the contribution of various techniques of exchange rate management to the output stability of twelve industrial countries. We estimate the distribution of unanticipated disturbances in outputs and the payments balances under pegged exchange rates from the 1955-1971 experience. We use this distribution to characterize the foreign exchange market intervention procedures which simultaneously minimize the output variances of the sample countries. The efficient procedures and the alternatives of managed floats, basket pegs, and the European currency area are compared according to structure and efficacy; and several implications for I.M.F. surveillance of exchange rates are drawn.

THE large increase in the labor force participation of women during recent times has been accompanied by a less-noted but also important change in their employment picture-the growth of part-week work.' While the participation rate of women was increasing from 37% in 1957 to 49% in 1977, the percentage of female employment in part-week jobs was rising from 20% to 27% (U.S. Office of the President, 1970, 1978).2 Economists have linked these changes to both the secular rise of the unemployment rate in the United States and the differential between female and male unemployment (Friedman, 1977; Niemi, 1974; Perry, 1970). For example, Friedman states

In this paper the labor force entry and exit by married women are examined using longitudinal data that enable one to observe actual changes in economic behavior and characteristics. The symmetry assumption is investigated by estimating separate equations for the entry and exit choice. Section II briefly analyzes the wifes labor supply decision and discusses the issue of symmetry. The data and analytical procedure are described in section III and the empirical results are presented in section IV. Some implications of our findings are presented in section V. (excerpt)

Great achievements in knowledge are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Nobel Prize winners and great inventors have become especially unproductive at younger ages. Meanwhile, the early life cycle decline is not offset by increased productivity beyond middle age. The early life cycle dynamics are closely related to age when the PhD was received, and I discuss a theory where knowledge accumulation across generations leads innovators to seek more education over time. More generally, the narrowing innovative life cycle reduces, other things equal, aggregate creative output. This productivity drop is particularly acute if innovators' raw ability is greatest when young.

The determination of how to distinguish between unemployment and nonparticipation is important and controversial. The conventional approach employs a priori reasoning together with self-reported current behavior. This paper employs an evidence-based classification of labor force status using information about the consequences of the behavior of the nonemployed. We find that marginal attachment—defined as desiring work, although not searching—is a distinct labor market state, lying between those who do not desire work and the unemployed. Furthermore, important heterogeneities exist within these nonemployment states. Two subsets of nonparticipants—both engaged in waiting—display behavior similar to the unemployed.

In addition to generating housing services, owner-occupied housing units constitute a lumpy, risky asset in household portfolios. Analysis of these dual consumption/investment roles suggests the permanent wealth budget constraint in housing demand models should be decomposed into permanent returns from human capital and current net worth. For young owners, current net worth is hypothesized to be the dominant wealth component determining the quantity of housing demanded. Using a Canadian microdata base, evidence is found that net worth does provide both greater explanatory power and higher elasticities than labor earnings.

This note revisits the proof of the steady-state growth theorem, first given by Uzawa in 1961.We provide a clear statement of the theorem, discuss intuition for why it holds, and present a new, elegant proof due to Schlicht (2006).

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a radon risk communication program based on how the estimated value of additional information varies across the six types of descriptive materials randomly assigned to a panel of homeowners participating in a radon utility model estimated with probit from respondents' answers to a contingent behavior question asking if they would purchase at a one-time price the services of a licensed technician to analyze their radon problems. The findings indicate that the information materials used most frequently by states and testing companies to explain radon's risk are the least effective of the six considered.