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  Public Policy Brief No. 54

  Down and Out in the United States

  Despite a long period of strong economic growth, more than 28 million working-age persons were categorized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as out of the labor force in 1998. A small portion of this population will move into the labor force, but the majority will remain without work. This brief examines the demographics of […]
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  Public Policy Brief No. 53

  Full Employment Has Not Been Achieved

  Claims that the nation has reached full employment take for granted the need for a reserve pool of labor to maintain price stability and labor market flexibility. But are millions of jobless and underemployed workers the best we can do in these times of economic expansion? And what will happen when the inevitable downturn comes? […]
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  Public Policy Brief No. 52

  Government Spending in a Growing Economy

  Based on neoclassical theory, cutting budget deficits has come to be seen as a principal way to increase long-run growth, but the empirical evidence is ambiguous on the outcome of this macropolicy. A new model, the classical growth cycles (CGC) model, offers an alternative theoretical framework for analyzing the complex effects of fiscal policy. The […]
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  Policy Notes No. 7

  Capital Income Taxes and Economic Performance

  Tax reform that reduces tax rates on capital income, no matter how successful it is in reducing the user cost of capital, will have at best minimal effects on capital formation and output and therefore on the growth of the United States’ economy.
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  Press Release

  New Social Security Plan Would Cause Real Pain, No Gain

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  Policy Notes No. 6

  The Minimum Wage Can Be Raised

  Survey responses make it clear the minimum wage can be raised. The question now is, How high can it be raised before serious employment consequences occur?
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  Working Paper No. 270

  Can Social Security Be Saved?

  The first part of this paper is an overview of projections of Social Security’s future and an explanation of why the projections have led many to believe there is a looming financial crisis. We argue that any problems to be faced are far down the road and not severe enough to justify the use of […]
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  Working Paper No. 269

  Demand Constraints and Economic Growth

  In recent years the United States has seemed to achieve the best of all possible worlds: robust economic growth, very low unemployment, and low inflation. Many attribute this performance to fewer supply-side constraints, as the country has moved away from stifling regulations and other impediments to trade. When compared with the very high unemployment rates […]
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  Policy Notes No. 5

  How Can We Provide for the Baby Boomers in Their Old Age?

  The search for the solution to the problems faced by the Social Security system should focus not on how to amend OASDI but on how best to achieve faster long-term economic growth. Achieving such growth is better left to the purview of fiscal and monetary policy, not the OASDI system.
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  Report No. 2

  Report May 1999

  In The Levy Report Interview, James K. Galbraith discusses his views on the state of the American economy and the economics profession, including the Federal Reserve’s focus on controlling inflation, monetary policy’s role in lowering unemployment, and the connection between unemployment and inequality in the wage structure. Contents: Ninth Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on […]
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  Conference Proceedings

  9th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on Financial Structure

  The objective of the Ninth Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on Financial Structure was to determine the extent to which domestic and global economic events coincided with the types of instabilities Minsky describes, and to analyze his policy recommendations to alleviate instability and other economic problems. The conference was held April 21–23, 1999, at the […]
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  Working Paper No. 268

  Risk Reduction in the New Financial Architecture

  Five times in a decade not yet completed, financial markets have floated to the edge of a whirlpool. In October 1998, they were about to drown when Alan Greenspan threw them a piece of string that, surprisingly, turned out to be a lifeline. The causes for this financial instability lie deep—in the economic theory that […]