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Fiscal fourth-quarter results Wednesday from payroll-services firm Paychex Inc. PAYX 0.93 % will likely reflect the lackluster and inconsistent spring seen by many small businesses.

Authors Bart Hobijn and Alexander Nussbacher write “there is evidence that differences in propensities to consume this additional income across households are smaller than commonly assumed.” What’s more, the ability to borrow is important, and can “provide the opportunity for lower-income households to smooth their consumption and maintain it at an acceptable level even when their incomes decline, thereby providing an alternative source of economic stimulus,” they said.

Among eight major advanced economies, all but one — the United States — show gains in labor force participation over the past 15 years, according to a new study by Maximiliano Dvorkin and Hannah Shell of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% from April, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the biggest rise in more than two years and largely reflected increased prices for energy, including gasoline. Food prices were flat, and prices excluding food and energy ticked up 0.1%.

The latest data on U.S. economic output paints a less bleak picture of the economy coming out of the first quarter. But the U.S. appears poised to match last year’s less-than-impressive first half.

The legislation, passed 60-38, will give Mr. Obama “fast track” authority that allows him to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments. Negotiators have said that process is crucial to completing the 12-nation trade deal with countries around the Pacific Ocean, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The study of households who received federal subsidies to “weatherize” their homes found the efficiency investments cost far more than they save. So consumers may not be irrational when they pass up such investments: the programs simply aren’t as beneficial as their promoters think.

Employment, state GDP, labor-law and tax data from 2000 to the present yield two strong lessons. First, a business-friendly climate—market-oriented labor policies and lower taxes—is effective in raising the growth in a state’s gross domestic product and employment. Second, states that suffered the worst employment shocks in the 2007-09 recession had the most rapid postrecession employment growth. This suggests that the weak national recovery cannot be explained by the depth of the recession.

History also makes clear that better macroeconomic policies can drive growth. President Reagan’s agenda—tax cuts, regulatory reforms and support of sound monetary policy—are a prominent example. After the deep recession of 1981-82, real GDP growth averaged 4.8% in the next 23 quarters. President Kennedy’s personal income-tax rate cuts in the mid-1960s and President Clinton’s tax reductions on capital accompanied by budget restraint in the late 1990s offer other examples of pro-growth policy improvements.

Silicon Valley has pioneered the so-called sharing economy with apps that help individuals exchange goods and services. But a decision by California regulators threatens the car-hailing Uber and other sharing start-ups.

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar power project in California’s Mojave Desert is supposed to be generating more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year. But 15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of that, according to data from the U.S. Energy Department.

Employer costs for employee compensation jumped 4.9% from a year earlier in March, the Labor Department said Wednesday, the second consecutive increase at that relatively robust level.

The National Association of Manufacturers in a quarterly outlook survey found its members now expect capital investment to grow 1.9% over the next 12 months, down from a 2.3% forecast in March. Full-time employment is expected to expand only 0.8%, down from 1.9%, and wages are seen rising 1.6%, down from 1.9%.

When China was booming, scrap dealers focused heavily on that market. Ships that carried furniture and other household goods from China to California returned stuffed with old metal and boxes ready to be converted into new products. That traffic has slowed.

Data from the trade consulting group Trade Partnership Worldwide illustrates how the congressional districts with the highest value of exports in 2013 (excluding oil and gas shipments) were places where the number of households earning more than $100,000 a year and the number of college graduates were above the national average–often far above. (See the complete chart.)