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Working Paper No. 648Views of European Races among the Research Staff of the US Immigration Commission and the Census Bureau, ca. 1910
January 06, 2011 This paper discusses support for, and opposition to, racial classification of European immigrants among high-level researchers at both the United States Immigration Commission of 1907–11 (the Dillingham Commission) and the...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 647
Money
December 24, 2010 This paper advances three fundamental propositions regarding money: (1) As R. W. Clower (1965) famously put it, money buys goods and goods buy money, but goods do not buy goods....more Publication -
Working Paper No. 646
A Demographic Base for Ethnic Survival?
December 22, 2010 New data from the IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) project permit an exploration of the demographic basis for ethnic survival across successive generations. I first explore the degree of...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 645
Quantitative Easing and Proposals for Reform of Monetary Policy Operations
December 14, 2010 Beyond its original mission to “furnish an elastic currency” as lender of last resort and manager of the payments system, the Federal Reserve has always been responsible (along with the...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 644
How Rich Countries Became Rich and Why Poor Countries Remain Poor
December 13, 2010 Becoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 643
Modeling Technological Progress and Investment in China
December 07, 2010 Since the early 1990s, the number of papers estimating econometric models and using other quantitative techniques to try to understand different aspects of the Chinese economy has mushroomed. A common...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 642
China in the Global Economy
December 06, 2010 China occupies a unique position among developing countries. Its success in achieving relative stability in the financial sector since the institution of reforms in 1979 has given way to relative...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 641
Disaggregating the Resource Curse
December 02, 2010 The hypothesis of the natural resource curse has captivated the economics profession, and since the mid-1990s has generated a large body of policymaking initiatives aimed at dispelling the curse. In...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 640
he Central Bank “Printing Press”: Boon or Bane?
December 01, 2010 In recent years, the US public debt has grown rapidly, with last fiscal year’s deficit reaching nearly $1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, many of the euro nations with large amounts of public...more Publication -
BlogFederal Pay Rates Frozen; How High Are They Now?
December 01, 2010 Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that it wants to freeze wages and salaries earned by federal government employees in calendar years 2011 and 2012. Most federal workers might otherwise have received a cost-of-living raise at the start of the new year. There has been some controversy about whether these workers are overpaid. In this post, [...] Blog -
Blog
American-German divide on macroeconomic policy alive and kicking
November 29, 2010 Developments surrounding the recent G-20 summit further underlined some starkly conflicting views among key global policymakers, an important “American-German divide” in matters of macroeconomic policy in particular. Blog -
Blog
Does paying interest on reserves stall growth?
November 18, 2010 In an interesting (pun intended) post (Economist’s View: Interest on Reserves and Inflation) Mark Thoma says that the Fed’s paying banks interest on their reserves does not dampen investment, for two reasons, one on the supply side and one on the demand side. On the supply side of the market for loans, Thoma points out [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 639
US “Quantitative Easing” Is Fracturing the Global Economy
November 18, 2010 The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing is presented as injecting $600 billion into “the economy.” But instead of getting banks lending to Americans again—households and firms—the money is going abroad, through...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 638
Exports, Capabilities, and Industrial Policy in India
November 17, 2010 An extensive literature argues that India’s manufacturing sector has underperformed, and that the country has failed to industrialize; in particular, it has failed to take advantage of its labor-abundant comparative...more Publication -
Blog
A proposal for an equitable Social Security retirement age
November 16, 2010 This idea first occurred to me while I was in France in September. I marveled that the debate they’re having (complete with effective social mobilization), is about raising the retirement age to 62. The current Social Security retirement age is 67, and the ‘serious’ proposal from Bowles-Simpson is to index it to life expectancy. This [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 7Reserve Currencies and the Dollar’s Role in Containing Global Imbalances
November 13, 2010 The stability of the international reserve currency’s purchasing power is less a question of what serves as that currency and more a question of the international adjustment mechanism, as well...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 637
Financial Stability, Regulatory Buffers, and Economic Growth
November 12, 2010 Over the past 40 years, regulatory reforms have been undertaken on the assumption that markets are efficient and self-corrective, crises are random events that are unpreventable, the purpose of an...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 6
Minsky’s View of Capitalism and Banking in America
November 12, 2010 Before we can reform the financial system, we need to understand what banks do—or, better yet, what banks should do. Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray examines Hyman Minsky’s views on...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 636
Bernanke’s Paradox: Can He Reconcile His Position on the Federal Budget with His Recent Charge to Prevent Deflation?
November 11, 2010 This paper examines Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recipe for deflation fighting and the specific policy actions he took in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Both in his...more Publication -
Policy Note No. 4A New “Teachable” Moment?
November 11, 2010 A common refrain heard from those trying to justify the results of the recent midterm elections is that the government’s fiscal stimulus to save the US economy from depression undermined...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 5
Preventing Another Crisis
November 11, 2010 There is no justification for the belief that cutting spending or raising taxes by any amount will reduce the federal deficit, let alone permit solid growth. The worst fears about...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 635
International Trade Theory and Policy
November 10, 2010 This paper provides a survey of the literature on trade theory, from the classical example of comparative advantage to the New Trade theories currently used by many advanced countries to...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 4
Είναι καταδικασμένη η ευρωζώνη;
November 10, 2010 Το ενός τρισεκατομυρρίων δολαρίων πακέτο διάσωσης που προώθησαν οι ευρωπαίοι ηγέτες τον Μαη του 2010 και που στοχεύει στην αντιμετώπιση της αυξανόμενης κρίση χρέους της ηπείρου, θα μπορούσε κάλλιστα να...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 4
Is the Eurozone Doomed?
November 10, 2010 The trillion-dollar rescue package European leaders aimed at the continent’s growing debt crisis in May might well have been code-named Panacea. Stocks rose throughout the region, but the reprieve was...more Publication