Search

4195 results found

• 

  Public Policy Brief No. 37

  Investment in Innovation

  Since the 1970s corporate America has become obsessed with shedding employees to cut costs and with distributing revenue to stockholders. However, the way for it to regain its competitive edge and thus to restore the promise of secure and remunerative employment for its workers is to reform its system of governance. It must reject organizational […]
• 

  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 38

  Who Pays for Disinflation?

  Using theoretical predictions, econometric results, and the example of the Volcker disinflation, Willem Thorbecke establishes that through disinflation’s burden on the durable goods and construction industries, small firms, and low-wage workers and its benefits to bond market investors, it effects a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Because of this distributional consequence, […]
• 

  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 37

  Investment in Innovation

  Since the 1970s corporate America has become obsessed with shedding employees to cut costs and with distributing revenue to stockholders. However, the way for it to regain its competitive edge and thus to restore the promise of secure and remunerative employment for its workers is to reform its system of governance. It must reject organizational […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 221

  Policy Innovation As a Discovery Procedure

  Economist Adolph Lowe’s instrumental analysis examines the process of policy formulation as a regressive procedure of discovery. Taking as given a predetermined desired end state, the task of an innovator is to discover the technical and social path from the present position to the end state. The role for the economist in policy formulation, therefore, […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 220

  Employment Policy, Community Development, and the Underclass

  There has been widespread recognition of the existence of an “underclass” in American society, but no consensus on how to address the problem or even how to define it. The term was first coined in 1982 by New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, who used it broadly to include individuals with “behavioral and income deficiencies”; other […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 219

  Linking the Minimum Wage to Productivity

  One of the principal problems with the minimum wage is that adjustments to it must be voted on by Congress. Although recent congressional action solves the immediate problem of restoring value to a wage that has otherwise failed to keep pace with inflation, it has not removed the issue from the political agenda. Every time […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 218

  Selective Use of Discretionary Public Employment and Economic Flexibility

  Flexibility is a desirable feature of an economic system. Structural rigidities can result in sluggish growth and inflationary pressures; many economic models, however, display considerable system flexibility because of the use of unacceptably unrealistic assumptions. The primary “real-life” features endowing the system with flexibility are unemployment and excess capacity. While realistic, unemployment is economically costly […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 217

  The Economic Contributions of Hyman Minsky

  Financial economist Hyman P. Minsky believed that because there are many types of capitalism determined by circumstances and an evolving set of institutional structures, an abstract economic theory could not be applicable in all times and places but must be institution-specific. Therefore, he focused his attention on the changing institutional structure of developed capitalist economies […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 216

  The Impact of Racial Segregation on the Education and Work Outcomes of Second-generation West Indians in New York City

  Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, examines one way in which race matters in the United States by studying black children of immigrants in New York City. She demonstrates that the segregation and concentrated poverty in black neighborhoods have long-lasting effects on the acquisition of skills. These youth face direct employment […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 215

  Achievement and Ambition among Children of Immigrants in Southern California

  The influx of immigrants to the United States after 1965 has reached levels not seen since the early part of the century. The ability of these recent immigrant groups and their children to succeed in the American economy has been hotly debated but, until recently, little studied. Rubin G. Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 214

  The School-to-Work Transition of Second-generation Immigrants in Metropolitan New York

  Social scientists have only begun to study the experiences of the 15 million immigrants who have settled in the United States since 1965 and have learned even less about their children. Several speculate that the children of immigrants, being restricted to poor inner city schools, bad jobs, and shrinking economic niches, will experience downward mobility, […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 213

  Government As Employer of Last Resort

  Since the Employment Act of 1946 a stated policy of the United States government has been to pursue simultaneously high employment and stable prices. However, because many economists and policymakers do not believe that it is possible to have both high employment and stable prices, monetary policy has generally been geared, at least for the […]