Economics

Individual perception — for example, how people feel they are doing financially compared with others — often doesn’t jibe with reality.

Economic mobility is one area where beliefs solidify absent information. Research shows that Americans are chronically under-informed about the size of the economic inequality gap in the U.S. That leads people to think they are more economically mobile than they really might be. And misperception can impact policy.

Each month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Employment Situation report. This report includes about two dozen distinct datasets that can help economists, journalists and the public understand the health of the nation’s economy. It’s where to find monthly changes to the number of people employed and the unemployment rate, and it’s a report that’s widely covered in the media, but isn’t always covered with much context.

High-level finance ministers and officials from some of the most economically powerful countries in the world will convene when the G-20 meets June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan.

Policies and positions can shift over time. But when it comes to where America’s legislators invest their personal money, turns out they stick pretty firmly to their ideological ground, according to research newly published in Management Science.

Banks consider lots of factors when determining if a mortgage applicant is a good credit risk. Race can’t be one of them — but that wasn’t true before the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968.

Growing up in a country with wide income inequality is associated with being bullied during early adolescence, according to a new paper in JAMA Pediatrics from nine researchers representing universities around the world.

As the Federal Reserve bumped interest rates more than 4 percentage points in the lead-up to the Great Recession, investors steered toward increasingly risky bets on the U.S. housing market, according to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.