Word: percent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...baccalaureate address to the Class of 2008 in Memorial Church Tuesday, Faust focused on the unease that many Harvard students feel in taking lucrative positions in finance or consulting. Thirty-nine percent of seniors who are entering the workforce this year have jobs in one of those fields, according to a Crimson survey released today...
...class--and some of your professors--were not yet born in 1975, let me begin by briefly surveying the economic landscape in the mid-1970s. The economy had just gone through a severe recession, during which output, income, and employment fell sharply and the unemployment rate rose to 9 percent. Meanwhile, consumer price inflation, which had been around 3 percent to 4 percent earlier in the decade, soared to more than 10 percent during my senior year.1
...central banker, a particularly critical difference between then and now is what has happened to inflation and inflation expectations. The overall inflation rate has averaged about 3-1/2 percent over the past four quarters, significantly higher than we would like but much less than the double-digit rates that inflation reached in the mid-1970s and then again in 1980. Moreover, the increase in inflation has been milder this time--on the order of 1 percentage point over the past year as compared with the 6 percentage point jump that followed the 1973 oil price shock.4 From the perspective...
...decades following the end of World War II were remarkable for their industrial innovation and creativity. From 1948 to 1973, output per hour of work grew by nearly 3 percent per year, on average.8 But then, for the next 20 years or so, productivity growth averaged only about 1-1/2 percent per year, barely half its previous rate. Predictably, the rate of increase in the standard of living slowed as well, and to about the same extent. The difference between 3 percent and 1-1/2 percent may sound small. But at 3 percent per year, the standard...
...Productivity growth revived in the mid-1990s, as I mentioned, illustrating once again the resilience of the American economy.10 Since 1995, productivity has increased at about a 2-1/2 percent annual rate. A great deal of intellectual effort has been expended in trying to explain the recent performance and to forecast the future evolution of productivity. Much very good work has been conducted here at Harvard by Dale Jorgenson (my senior thesis adviser in 1975, by the way) and his colleagues, and other important research in the area has been done at the Federal Reserve Board.11 One key finding...