The Great Recession brought high rates of unemployment that have been slow to recede. When Edward Lazear and James Spletzer analyze labor market data, they find that the increased rates of unemployment in recent years cannot be explained by structural changes, industrial or demographic shifts, or a mismatch of skills with job vacancies. Instead, their findings suggest that unemployment is being caused by cyclical factors that are simply more pronounced during the current recession than in prior recessions.

Timothy Simcoe and Michael Toffel examine whether green building procurement policies which apply only to municipal buildings accelerate the use of green building practices by private-sector developers. The researchers find that the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard for sustainable building practices diffuses nearly twice as quickly among private-sector developers in municipalities that adopt government-oriented green building procurement policies as in a matched control sample of cities of similar size, demographics, and environmental preferences. In addition, they find more LEED adoption among "neighbor cities" - those bordering the city that adopted a green building policy. They suggest that government purchasing policies may break deadlocks that emerge when coordinated investments are required to adopt a common standard, and that this in turn may stimulate the private-sector market for the goods and services targeted by government green procurement policies.

Enrique Mendoza and Marco Terrones identify 70 credit booms -- episodes in which credit to the private sector rises significantly above its long-run trend -- that occurred in 61 emerging and industrial countries between 1960 and 2010. They find that in the upswing phase, credit booms are associated with periods of economic expansion, rising equity and house prices, real currency appreciation, and widening external deficits. Credit booms also tend to be synchronized internationally. They are similar in duration and magnitude in the industrial and the emerging economies, and often follow surges in capital inflows, gains in total factor productivity, and financial reforms. Credit booms are often followed by banking or currency crises, and they are far more common with managed than with flexible exchange rates.