The joint determination of work and investment in human capital over the life cycle is analyzed. At low rates of impatience investment is decreasing throughout life, as in simpler models which assume hours of work to be fixed. The demand for leisure over the life cycle is "U shaped." Wages rise to a single peak which occurs after the peak in hours of work. Distinctly different patterns arise when the rate of impatience is high. Such individuals may prefer an increasing hours of work profile, and schooling need not be concentrated at the beginning of life. Conditions are provided to determine a critical level of time preference which is sufficient to induce a "normal" life-cycle pattern for investment and work.

The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why. The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary monetary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future.

Central banks are increasingly reaching out to the general public to motivate and explain their monetary policy actions. One major aim of this outreach is to ensure accountability and create trust; another is to guide inflation expectations. This article surveys a rapidly growing literature on central bank communication with the public, rather than with the financial markets. We first discuss why such communication matters and is more challenging than communicating with expert audiences. Then we turn to methods: How do central banks try to reach the public, and do they succeed? Next, and importantly, we survey the empirical evidence on the extent to which this new outreach affects inflation expectations. On balance, we see some promise in the potential to inform the public better, but many challenges along the way.

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication—mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this ever-growing literature. The evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank's toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets, to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions, and potentially to help achieve central banks' macroeconomic objectives. However, the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy.