RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Douglas W. Elmendorf, April 10, 2008, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Congress and the administration are moving forward in myriad ways to boost beleaguered homeowners and put the economy back on track. Doug Elmendorf, testifying before the Senate, urged policy-makers to expand the role of the Federal Housing Administration to help families in trouble refinance their mortgages, and offered comments on the compromise Senate housing bill. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Alice M. Rivlin, May 28, 2008, National Governors Association
The following remarks were delivered by Alice Rivlin during a luncheon speech at the State on Foreclosures and Housing Solutions hosted by the National Governors Association. Illustrating the effects of both the credit and foreclosure crisis providing reasons for optimis in the current state of the economy. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Martin Neil Baily, Douglas W. Elmendorf and Robert E. Litan, May 16, 2008, The Brookings Institution
With the U.S. financial system still in a perilous state, Martin Baily, Doug Elmendorf and Bob Litan diagnose what caused the crisis and offer prescriptions for policy change. The authors of this new Brookings paper address two challenges: to resolve the immediate problems and to reduce the likelihood that these problems recur. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Walter Kälin, Rhodri C. Williams, Khalid Koser and Andrew Solomon, January 19, 2010, The American Society of International Law and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement
The Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of IDPs has urged governments to adopt laws or policies to address internal displacement, as they hold the primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the displaced. The studies in this book analyze the key issues and challenges to developing laws and policies on internal displacement. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Karen Dynan and Martin Neil Baily, January 11, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Karen Dynan and Martin Baily give the Obama administration an A- in its effort to restore U.S. economic confidence, offering credit for deft handling of the economic crisis but raising questions about whether the president has laid the foundation for sustained growth. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William H. Frey, December 29, 2009, The Brookings Institution
New census estimates provide the first real glimpse of how migration and population growth may be responding to the housing slowdown, job losses, and broader recession. William Frey says that the past decade has seen a topsy-turvy pattern of migration movement that has now ended with the greatest migration slowdown since World War II. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ted Gayer, December 17, 2009, The Environmental Law Institute
In a recent presentation to the Environmental Law Institute, Ted Gayer outlined the underlying causes of the financial crisis and the economic outlook facing the United States in the months to come. Gayer concludes that by the end of 2010 a modest recovery will have occurred. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Jennifer S. Vey, December 15, 2009, The Brookings Institution
A supplement to the MetroMonitor, this second edition of the Great Lakes Monitor examines the 21 largest metros in the Great Lakes region on key indicators of economic performance. It illustrates that, although Great Lakes metros have for decades shared in the struggle to retool their economies, the recession has had highly varied impacts across the region. The findings help define where and how policymakers and regional stakeholders need to focus their energies to help ensure that recovery comes—if slowly—to all parts of this complex area. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
December 15, 2009, The Brookings Institution
The third MetroMonitor reveals that the U.S. economy has entered a period of “fragile recovery,” but that wide disparities remain across the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. Several posted signs of robust economic growth in the third quarter of 2009, most showed a mixed though improving performance across their headline indicators, and some metro areas remained mired in recession with no signs that recovery is around the corner. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Mark Muro and Jonathan Rothwell, December 15, 2009, The Brookings Institution
This inaugural edition of the Mountain Monitor companion to the MetroMonitor examines trends in 10 large and 10 smaller metros in the Intermountain West and reports that the region’s metros have suffered disproportionately in the Great Recession, but not equally. Highly uneven economic performance is highlighted, with those metros hit hardest by the collapse of the regional housing bubble—Las Vegas, Boise, and Phoenix—exhibiting the worst conditions and those with the highest education levels performing the best. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Orr, December 15, 2009, The Brookings Institution
This Metro D.C. Monitor, second of a quarterly series and a supplement to the MetroMonitor, tracks five key third quarter economic indicators in the Washington region. The region has mostly been spared the worst of the crisis: Output has grown throughout and employment remained relatively strong. However, the housing market was weaker than most. Moreover, economic recovery within the region was uneven as several jurisdictions continued to face multiple challenges. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Douglas J. Elliott and Martin Neil Baily, November 23, 2009, The Brookings Institution
What really caused the great economic crisis of the past year? Should the Fed’s powers be stripped away, per legislation sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul that recently passed the House Financial Services Committee? In an effort to help inform the debate, Brookings Fellow Douglas Elliott and Senior Fellow Martin Baily ponder the importance of public perceptions of the causes of the crisis - and how they will affect chances of financial regulatory reform. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ted Gayer, November 19, 2009, The Brookings Institution
The housing market, thought to finally be stabilizing, took a surprising tumble with new-home starts dropping 10.6% in October from the previous month. Ted Gayer writes that those expecting the recently extended and expanded homebuyer tax credit to improve this situation are likely to be disappointed, and that the credit may be unintentionally weakening the rental market. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Barry P. Bosworth and Rosanna Smart, November 18, 2009, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart explore the consequences of the housing price bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households, utilizing micro survey data to follow the rise in home values to 2007 and observing which households enjoyed home price appreciation and how they responded in terms of equity withdrawal. The authors conclude that while older households mitigated their real estate and equity losses with relatively stable fixed-value assets and pension programs, they also lost much of their presumed gains relative to earlier cohorts, and they will have less time to recover. Read More
PAST EVENT
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
9:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Washington, DC
On November 17, a day-long conference co-sponsored by Brookings and the Heritage Foundation will explore the measurement challenges associated with the recession, particularly in the financial and housing sectors; how innovation can become a standard component of our national accounting system, and how incorporating innovation metrics will aid the development of a unified picture of the sources of growth and economic disruption. Read More