For example, a servicer could initiate a modification and bear the costs of reducing the mortgage payment to 38 percent of income, after which the government could bear a portion of the incremental cost of reducing the mortgage payments beyond 38 percent, say to 31 percent, of income.
The data revision made it necessary for us to re-evaluate the rise in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s, which has invited heated discussion under the title of "the rise of the new economy." What I would like to discuss here, however, is not whether and to what extent productivity growth accelerated during the period.