Alan Greenspan Costs Quotations

The rates of return on investment in the same new technologies are correspondingly less in Europe and Japan because businesses there face higher costs of displacing workers than we do, ... Moreover, because our costs of dismissing workers are lower, the potential costs of hiring and the risks associated with expanding employment are less.

Over most of the past several years, the behavior of unit labor costs has been quite subdued, ... But those costs have turned up of late, and whether the favorable trends of the past few years will be maintained is unclear.

Lower equity prices and higher financing costs should damp household and business spending, and greater uncertainty and risk aversion may also lead to more cautious spending behavior,