In the new issue of Economic Quarterly, Kartik B. Athreya and Devin Reilly of the Richmond Fed and Nicole B. Simpson of Colgate University consider several relatively overlooked aspects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the largest federal cash-assistance program for lower income families.

Millions of Americans receive -- or plan to receive -- retirement benefits from public pension plans. But the financial viability of many of those plans has come under scrutiny recently. Some observers worry that already precarious funding levels are likely to worsen, while others believe they will gradually improve as the economy recovers. The cover story of the latest issue of Region Focus examines this looming issue and considers options for putting public pensions on track toward better financial health.

Economists have long debated how important deficit spending is to macroeconomic outcomes. Most economists now agree that deficits are not inherently inflationary, but they differ on the effects of fiscal imbalances on interest rates and other economic variables.

In the new issue of Economic Quarterly Yash Mehra and Bansi Sawhney examine whether monetary policy actions during the Greenspan era, in particular between 2002 and 2006.

This special issue of Economic Quarterly is devoted to Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig's seminal 1983 article on bank fragility and banking regulation, which continues to provide insights for today's policymakers and researchers.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond today released its 2009 Annual Report, which features the essay, "Systemic Risk and the Pursuit of Efficiency."

The cover story in this issue of Region Focus considers whether there is a new -- and higher -- "natural" rate of unemployment that will help to define the labor market over the long run.

The featured article in this issue of Region Focus surveys the debate over the efficient market hypothesis in the wake of the financial crisis.

At the aggregate level, employment can be well explained by a relatively small number of factors. But when individual sectors are examined, things are quite different, according to findings by Richmond Fed economist Pierre-Daniel Sarte and research assistant Nadezhda Malysheva. Their results suggest that across all goods and services, common shocks explain on average only 31 percent of the variation in sectoral employment. "In other words, employment at the sectoral level is driven mostly by idiosyncratic shocks, rather than common shocks, to the different sectors," the authors write.