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BPEA | 1989 No. 1

Editors’ Summary of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity – 1989 No 1

1989, No. 1


THIS ISSUE OF Brookings Papers on Economic Activity contains papers
and discussions presented at the forty-seventh conference of the Brookings
Panel on Economic Activity, which was held in Washington, D.C.,
on April 6 and 7, 1989. The first major paper provides a model showing
a central role for job vacancies in explaining the dynamics of the labor
market. The second paper speculates on how institutional changes over
the past decade have altered the way in which U.S. monetary policy
affects the national economy. The third paper examines the correlation
among the stock price indexes of Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and
the United States before and after the stock market crash of October
1987. The fourth paper focuses on the Federal Reserve’s measures of
capacity utilization and questionst he conventional interpretation of high
capacity utilization as signaling the need for contractionary monetary
policy. The first of two reports details the plight of the nation’s troubled
thrift industry, evaluates the legislative solution crafted by the administration
and Congress, and looks ahead to signs of possible trouble in the
banking industry. The final report examines the way exchange rate
changes in the dollar are reflected in U.S. prices of imported manufactured
goods.