Economics

While the end of Saturday delivery will reduce costs for the U.S. Postal Service, the mail carrier must pursue more solutions if it wants to survive, according to a University of Illinois economics professor. It even remains to be seen whether...

Illinois is mired in a deep employment recession that could linger for years unless the state unravels the roots of its nearly decade-long job slump, a new study by a University of Illinois geographer and economist...

Scaling back mail delivery from six days a week to five may be the best bet to stem mounting U.S. Postal Service losses, but could still be a gamble, says a University of Illinois economist who has studied the agency’s persistent financial decline....

A proposed federal prison in northwest Illinois would lock up a double dose of much-needed cash to chip away at the state’s gaping budget hole, a University of Illinois economist says.J. Fred Giertz says money from selling the largely unused state lockup and the thousands of jobs that would follow...

Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, did an experiment in the 1980s in which he tried to find out how much time it would take to start a new business in Peru. He discovered that it took 256 working days just to obtain the 11 necessary permits—and two of the permits could only be obtained with...

Immigrants whittle into a broad earnings gap with American-born workers only about half as fast as long-accepted estimates suggest, according to new research by a University of Illinois economist. Darren Lubotsky says immigrants’ typically low...

Even in the final days of the 2008 presidential campaign, polling was inescapable. Politicians rely on private polling commissioned by their campaigns to measure voter preferences, while voters rely on public polling to keep track of the horse race. Research by University of Illinois...

The credit freeze is showing signs of thawing, says LAS economist Anne Villamil. Villamil points to the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, which is the interest rate that banks charge each other for three-month loans. “Libor has dropped to the...

A massive Wall Street bailout won’t stave off a recession, but it will ease a creeping economic meltdown that threatened to slice into jobs, retirement savings, and access to credit across the country, a U of I economist says. Anne Villamil says the...

Media bias from both the left and right has become increasingly profitable and could affect election choices in 2008, according to three LAS economics professors, Dan Bernhardt, Stefan Krasa, and Mattias Polborn.Biased media boost ratings and profits...