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Working Paper No. 265
March 01, 1999
Real Exchange Rates and the International Mobility of Capital
AbstractThis paper demonstrates that the terms of trade are determined by the equalization of profit rates across international regulating capitals, for socially determined national real wages. This provides a classical/Marxian basis for the explanation of real exchange rates, based on the same principle of absolute cost advantage which rules national prices. Large international flows of […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 51
March 01, 1999
Small Business and Welfare Reform
AbstractThe Levy Institute conducted a survey of small businesses to elicit information about their hiring and employment practices, especially the hiring of former welfare recipients; preferences regarding education, training, and other characteristics of potential employees; effects of increases in the minimum wage on employment decisions; and their responses to various forms of government wage and […]
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Policy Notes No. 3
March 01, 1999
Surplus Mania
AbstractA federal government surplus has finally been achieved, and it has been met with pronouncements that it is a great gift for the future and with arguments about what to do with it. However, the surplus will be short-lived, it will depress economic growth, and, in any case, surpluses cannot be “used” for anything.
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Working Paper No. 264
February 01, 1999
Further Evidence on the Distributional Effects of Disinflationary Monetary Policy
AbstractThe performance of the United States’ economy between 1994 and 1998 was so good that some pundits began to call for the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to depress economic activity and reduce asset prices. However, slowing the economy to stabilize asset prices would have adverse distributional effects. Impulse-response functions from identified vector autoregression […]
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Working Paper No. 263
February 01, 1999
From Common Market to EMU
AbstractThis paper traces the history and the institutional background of European integration to the establishment of the economic and monetary union in the European Union (EU). After the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the late 1950s, attempts at monetary integration, and ultimately monetary union, tended to assume importance only as a result […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 50
February 01, 1999
Public Employment and Economic Flexibility
AbstractCentral banks, national governments, and international organizations have resisted policies that would promote full employment because high employment and high capacity utilization are associated with structural rigidities that result in sluggish growth, inflationary pressures, and other undesirable consequences. What has been almost entirely overlooked is the way in which public sector activity can enhance flexibility […]
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Policy Notes No. 2
February 01, 1999
The Emperor Has No Clothes
AbstractIf you were to write yourself IOUs to provide for your retirement and put them in a safety deposit box, would you rest comfortably, assured that you would be able to purchase all the necessities of life in 2020? Well, President Clinton’s proposal is even worse.
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Policy Notes No. 1
January 01, 1999
How Negative Can US Saving Get?
AbstractIn 1998 the volume of private spending in the United States rose by almost twice the increase in disposable income. The impact of this excess private spending financed by increased net borrowing has been profound; without it, the economy would have stagnated. Can this pattern of demand growth continue? The answer is a resounding no.
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Working Paper No. 262
January 01, 1999
The 1966 Financial Crisis
AbstractThe so-called credit crunch of 1966 has long been recognized as the first significant postwar financial crisis and one that required the first important intervention by the Federal Reserve Bank. In the midst of the robust postwar expansion, the Fed began to fear inflation and tightened monetary policy to the point at which profitability of […]
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Working Paper No. 261
January 01, 1999
Theories of Value and the Monetary Theory of Production
AbstractThis paper extends earlier work that argued that liquidity preference theory should be interpreted as a theory of value. Here I will argue that two theories of value are needed for analysis of a monetary production economy: the labor theory of value and the liquidity preference theory of value. Both Keynes and Marx were trying […]
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Strategic Analysis
January 01, 1999
Seven Unsustainable Processes
AbstractThe purpose of this Strategic Analysis is not to make short-term predictions about the life expectancy of the current economic expansion in the United States, but to determine if the present stance of fiscal and trade policy is appropriate in the medium term. The expansion has been generated by economic processes that are unsustainable—processes in […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 49
December 10, 1998
Corporate Governance in Germany
AbstractThe postwar system of corporate governance in Germany is being threatened by the failure of some industries to maintain their competitive position (with resulting significant job losses) and pressures for financial liquidity driven by those who have accumulated substantial financial holdings, institutions competing for control of those holdings, and those concerned about the funding of […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 47
December 09, 1998
Regulating HMOs
AbstractHMO medicine sets up an inevitable conflict between the physicians’ traditional fiduciary role and the financial interests of the health plan and its physicians. Regulatory interventions, such as the formulation of rules regarding clinical practice, put government in a micromanagement role it cannot hope to perform well. Government instead should focus on building a regulatory […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 48
December 09, 1998
Japanese Corporate Governance and Strategy
AbstractDespite the crisis in the Japanese financial sector, prolonged recession, and competitive challenges, Japan’s formidable productive system remains strong. Nevertheless, the system of corporate governance, which has pursued a strategy of retaining corporate revenues and reallocating labor resources and returns to labor in order to invest in productive capabilities, faces short-term pressures from a transformation […]
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Working Paper No. 260
December 01, 1998
Government Spending and Growth Cycles
AbstractIn this paper the impact of fiscal policy is analyzed within the context of an endogenous growth and cycles model. The investigation shows the different situations in which government expenditure can lead to both crowding-in and crowding-out of output and employment. With regard to the cycle, an increase in the share of government spending leads […]
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Working Paper No. 259
December 01, 1998
Constructing Long and Dense Time-Series of Inequality Using the Theil Index
AbstractYear-to-year economy-wide measures of income distribution, such as the Gini coefficient, are rarely available for long periods except in a few developed countries, and as a result few analyses of year-to-year changes in inequality exist. But wage and earnings data by industrial sectors are readily available for many countries over long time frames. This paper […]
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Working Paper No. 258
December 01, 1998
(Full) Employment Policy
AbstractIn 1998, the United States’ unemployment rate was at its lowest level since the late 1960s. Yet the nation’s employment problem is still far from solved. Although many economists assume that unemployment tends toward a natural rate below which it cannot go without creating inflation, this paper asks whether the current employment levels are the […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 46
November 08, 1998
Self-Reliance and Poverty
AbstractThe United States’ official poverty measure defines the poor in terms of a family’s actual, yearly cash income relative to an estimate of the income needed to sustain a minimally acceptable standard of living. An alternative definition, designed to reflect a family’s ability to achieve economic independence, would instead rest on its capacity for generating […]
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Working Paper No. 256
November 01, 1998
The Minimum Wage in Historical Perspective
AbstractDuring the Progressive period of American history the debate over the minimum wage was often between those who clung to traditional economic theory as a reason for not having a minimum wage and those who saw the efficiency-wage benefits of adopting one. Although the latter argument proved quite effective in swaying many state legislatures, it […]
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Working Paper No. 257
November 01, 1998
Is Keynesianism Institutionalist?
AbstractThis paper poses that the one commonality between institutionalist thought and Keynesianism (as presented in his General Theory) was money. Tracing the origins and uses of money, the myth of the development of money as a medium of exchange is dispelled and replaced with money used as evidence of debt, specifically, government debt. This paper […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 45
October 07, 1998
Did the Clinton Rising Tide Raise All Boats?
AbstractDuring the recent robust expansion only 700,000 of the almost 12 million jobs created went to the half of the population that does not have at least some college education. Even though the number of officially unemployed fell to less than 4 million in the 25-and-over age group, there remain in that group over 26 […]
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Working Paper No. 255
October 01, 1998
Economic Time
AbstractThis paper argues that economists require a particular concept of time to develop theory with greater explanatory power in describing and analyzing the sort of economy in which we are primarily interested–the monetary economy usually termed capitalism. Economists of various persuasions have recognized the importance of a concept of time, but we argue that a […]
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Working Paper No. 254
October 01, 1998
Toward a New Instrumental Macroeconomics
AbstractThis paper argues that the ideas of Abba Lerner and Adolph Lowe contain overlapping and complementary insights and themes that may contribute to the development of a new approach to macroeconomics. They also have rather specific practical policy implications. Lerner’s notions of functional finance and money as a creature of the state are combined with […]
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Working Paper No. 253
October 01, 1998
Finance and the Macroeconomic Process in a Classical Growth and Cycle Model
AbstractThe aim of this paper is to derive an endogenous growth and cycles model that integrates sectoral incomes, expenditures, and finance requirements into an ex ante social accounting matrix (SAM) in the spirit of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group. The SAM includes households, businesses, a banking sector with non-zero net worth, and the government. Investment […]
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