Publications

1681 publications found

• Working Paper No. 447 May 03, 2006

  Household Wealth and the Measurement of Economic Well-Being in the United States

  Edward N. Wolff, and Ajit Zacharias
  Abstract

  The standard official measure of household economic well-being in the United States is gross money income. The general consensus is that such measures are limited because they ignore other crucial determinants of well-being. We modify the standard measure to account for one such determinant: household wealth. We then analyze the level and distribution of economic […]

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• Working Paper No. 446 May 01, 2006

  Feminist-Kaleckian Macroeconomic Policy for Developing Countries

  Stephanie Seguino, and Caren A. Grown
  Abstract

  This paper reviews evidence of the gender effects of globalization in developing economies. It then outlines a set of macroeconomic and trade policies to promote gender equity. The evidence suggests that while liberalization has expanded women’s access to employment, the long-term goal of transforming gender inequalities remains unmet and appears unattainable without stateintervention in markets. […]

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• Policy Notes No. 4 April 30, 2006

  Debt and Lending

  Wynne Godley, and Gennaro Zezza
  Abstract

  Many papers published by the Levy Institute during the last few years have emphasized that the American economy has relied too much on the growth of lending to the private sector, most particularly to the personal sector, to offset the negative effect on aggregate demand of the growing current account deficit. Moreover, this growth in […]

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• Policy Notes No. 3 April 17, 2006

  Twin Deficits and Sustainability

  L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  In the mid-to-late 1980s, the American economy simultaneously produced—for the first time in the postwar period—huge federal budget deficits as well as large current account deficits, together known as the “twin deficits”. This generated much debate and hand-wringing, most of which focused on supposed “crowding-out” effects. Many claimed that the budgetdeficit was soaking up private […]

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• Working Paper No. 445 April 04, 2006

  A Random Walk Down Maple Lane?

  Abstract

  The development of the permanent income/life cycle consumption hypothesis was a key blow to Keynesian and Kaleckian economics. According to George Akerlof, it "set the agenda" for modern neoclassical macroeconomics. This paper focuses on the relationship of housing wealth to neoclassical consumption theory, and in particular, the degree to which homes can be treated collectively […]

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• Working Paper No. 444 March 06, 2006

  Tinbergen Rules the Taylor Rule

  Thomas R. Michl
  Abstract

  This paper elaborates a simple model of growth with a Taylor-like monetary policy rule that includes inflation targeting as a special case. When the inflation process originates in the product market, inflation targeting locks in the unemployment rate prevailing at the time the policy matures. Even though there is an apparent NAIRU and Phillips curve, […]

  Download Working Paper No. 444 PDF (428.56 KB)
• Policy Notes No. 2 February 20, 2006

  The Fiscal Facts

  James K. Galbraith
  Abstract

  Today’s federal budget deficits are a preoccupation of many American citizens and more than a few political leaders. Is the American government going bankrupt? Does our fiscal condition warrant radical surgery, as some now prescribe? Or, are we in such deep trouble that there is no plausible route of escape?

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• Working Paper No. 443 February 20, 2006

  Personality and Earnings

  Kaye K.W. Lee
  Abstract

  This paper studies personality as a potential explanation for wage differentials between apparently similar workers. This follows initial studies by Jencks (1979) that suggest that certain personality traits, such as industriousness and leadership, have an impact on earnings. The paper aims to provide a theoretical framework within which these effects may be analyzed.The study begins […]

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• Working Paper No. 442 February 19, 2006

  Government Effects on the Distribution of Income

  Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
  Abstract

  This paper is the overview chapter of an edited volume on “The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation.” The paper offers the author’s perspective on the government’s role as a redistributive agent. Taxation and public spending programs are analyzed using the experiences of the United States and other OECD countries. The stark differences among […]

  Download Working Paper No. 442 PDF (57.55 KB)
• Working Paper No. 441 February 18, 2006

  Prolegomena to Realistic Monetary Macroeconomics

  Wynne Godley, and Marc Lavoie
  Abstract

  This paper sets out a rigorous basis for the integration of Keynes-Kaleckian macroeconomics (with constant or increasing returns to labor, multipliers, markup pricing, et cetera) with a model of the financial system (comprising banks, loans, credit money, equities, and so on), together with a model of inflation. Central contentions of the paper are that there […]

  Download Working Paper No. 441 PDF (171.26 KB)
• Working Paper No. 440 February 17, 2006

  Parental Child Care in Single Parent, Cohabiting, and Married Couple Families

  Charlene M. Kalenkoski, David C. Ribar, and Leslie S. Stratton
  Abstract

  This study uses time diary data from the 2003 American Time Use Survey and the United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2000 to examine the time that single, cohabiting, and married parents devote to caring for their children. Time spent in market work, in child care as a primary activity, and in child care as a […]

  Download Working Paper No. 440 PDF (323.49 KB)
• Working Paper No. 439 February 16, 2006

  Where Do They Find the Time?

  Lyn Craig
  Abstract

  Parents who undertake paid work are obliged to spend time away from their children, and to use nonparental childcare. This has given rise to concern that children are missing out on parental attention. However, time-use studies have consistently shown that parents who are in paid employment do not reduce their parental childcare time on an […]

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• Public Policy Brief No. 83 January 17, 2006

  Reforming Deposit Insurance

  Panos Konstas
  Abstract

  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) currently insures bank deposit balances up to $100,000. According to some observers, statutory protection creates moral hazard problems for insurers because it allows banks to engage in risky activities. As an example, moral hazard was a key contributor to huge losses suffered when thrift institutions failed during the 1980s. […]

  Download Public Policy Brief No. 83, 2006 PDF (662.20 KB)
• Policy Notes No. 1 January 17, 2006

  Credit Derivatives and Financial Fragility

  Edward Chilcote
  Abstract

  On September 15, the Federal Reserve convened 14 large credit derivatives–dealer banks to an unusual meeting. The last such meeting occurred on September 16, 1998, in secret. At that time, a major financial institution was melting down and threatening to take some large banks with it. This time, they met to discuss the same topic: […]

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• Working Paper No. 438 January 17, 2006

  Keynes’s Approach to Money

  L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  This paper first examines two approaches to money adopted by John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory (GT). The first is the more familiar “supply and demand” equilibrium approach of Chapter 13 incorporated within conventional macroeconomics textbooks. Indeed, even post-Keynesians utilizing Keynes’s “finance motive” or the “horizontal” money supply curve adopt similar methodology. The second […]

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• Working Paper No. 437 January 16, 2006

  Enhancing Livelihood Security through the National Employment Guarantee Act

  Indira Hirway
  Abstract

  The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 is a major development in the history of poverty reduction strategies and rural development policies in India. Though the successful passage of the Act is due to the long struggle by NGOs, academics, and some policymakers, its successful implementation is a much bigger challenge. Effective implementation of […]

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• Working Paper No. 436 January 15, 2006

  Importing Equality or Exporting Jobs?

  Ebru Kongar
  Abstract

  This study investigates the impact of increased import competition on gender wage and employment differentials in American manufacturing over the period from 1976 to 1993. Increased import competition is expected to decrease the relative demand for workers in low-wage production occupations and the relative demand for women workers, given the high female share in these […]

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• Working Paper No. 435 January 14, 2006

  Speculation, Liquidity Preference, and Monetary Circulation

  Korkut A. Ertürk
  Abstract

  The sharp exchanges that Keynes had with some of his critics on the loanable funds theory made it harder to appreciate the degree to which his thought was continuous with the tradition of monetary analysis that emanates from Wicksell, of which Keynes’s A Treatise on Money was a part. In the aftermath of the General […]

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• Working Paper No. 434 January 13, 2006

  Time to Eat

  Daniel S. Hamermesh
  Abstract

  Eating requires the raw food materials that make up meals and also the time devoted to buying food, preparing meals and eating them, and cleaning up afterwards. Using time-diary and expenditure data for the United States for 1985 and 2003, I examine how income and time prices affect both time and goods input into this […]

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• Strategic Analysis January 01, 2006

  Are Housing Prices, Household Debt, and Growth Sustainable?

  Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Gennaro Zezza, and Edward Chilcote
  Abstract

  Rising home prices and low interest rates have fueled the recent surge in mortgage borrowing and enabled consumers to spend at high rates relative to their income. Low interest rates have counterbalanced the growth in debt and acted to dampen the growth in household debt-service burdens. As past Levy Institute Strategic Analyses have pointed out, […]

  Download Strategic Analysis, January 2006 PDF (342.12 KB)
• Working Paper No. 433 December 04, 2005

  All Types of Inequality Are Not Created Equal

  Stephanie Seguino
  Abstract

  Evidence of an increase in various forms of inequality since the 1970s has motivated research on its relationship to growth and development. The findings of that research are contradictory and inconclusive. One source of these divergent results is that researchers rely on different group measures of inequality. Inequality by gender, household, class, and ethnicity may […]

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• Working Paper No. 432 December 02, 2005

  Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley

  Bruce Fallick, Charles A. Fleischman, and James B. Rebitzer
  Abstract

  Observers of Silicon Valley’s computer cluster report that employees move rapidly between competing firms, but evidence supporting this claim is scarce. Job-hopping is important in computer clusters because it facilitates the reallocation of talent and resources toward firms with superior innovations. Using new data on labor mobility, we find higher rates of job-hopping for college-educated […]

• Book Series December 01, 2005

  Italians Then, Mexicans Now

  Joel Perlmann
  Abstract

  According to the American dream, hard work and a good education can lift people from poverty to success in the “land of opportunity.” The unskilled immigrants who came to the United States from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely realized that vision. Within a few generations, their […]

• Working Paper No. 431 November 23, 2005

  Monetary Policy Strategies of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the US

  Claudio Sardoni, and L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  In the debate on monetary policy strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, it is now almost a commonplace to contrast the Fed and the ECB by pointing out the former’s flexibility and capacity to adjust rigidity, and the latter’s extreme caution and its obsession with low inflation. In looking at the foundations of the […]

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