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  Working Paper No. 502

  Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States

  I find here that the early 2000s witnessed both exploding debt and the middle-class squeeze. While median wealth grew briskly in the late 1990s, it fell slightly between 2001 and 2004, while the inequality of net worth increased slightly. Indebtedness, which fell substantially during the late 1990s, skyrocketed in the early 2000s. Among the middle […]
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  Working Paper No. 501

  Two National Surveys of American Jews, 2000–01

  While there have been very few national surveys of American Jews, two that we do have are from the same period, 2000–01. They were conducted by different researchers using different sampling methods. Known as the NJPS and the AJIS, these surveys are now available as public-use datasets, but they have not yet been systematically compared. […]
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  Working Paper No. 500

  Economic Perspectives on Aging

  The aging of the American population will be a critical public policy issue in the years ahead. This paper surveys the recent literature on the economics of aging, with a special emphasis on government spending on the aged. The US Census Bureau projects that the proportion of the elderly in the total population will increase […]
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  Policy Notes

  State, Difference, and Diversity

  The centrality of the state in promoting gender equality is generally acknowledged, but a perplexing and complex issue confronts us: should the state treat men and women in identical ways, or should it legislate and enforce policies that are aware of gender differences? In other words, should the state be gender-blind or gender-sensitive? Gender, ethnic, […]
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  Summary No. 2

  Summary Spring 2007

  In this issue: a new Policy Note recommends reforming the Alternative Minimum Tax while retaining some tax cuts in order to reduce the growing tax burden on middle-class families. A related paper criticizes orthodox policymaking that calls for fiscally austere budgets when the real engine of economic growth is government spending. Contents:   INSTITUTE RESEARCH […]
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  Working Paper No. 499

  ELR-led Economic Development

  This paper establishes the financial feasibility of an employer-of-last-resort (ELR) program in a small developing country like Tunisia. It argues that an ELR-led economic development policy is vastly superior to the traditional import substitution industrialization (ISI), export-led, and FDI-led development models, all of which Tunisia has adopted without much success in reducing unemployment. Despite outperforming […]
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  Working Paper No. 498

  Employment Guarantee Programs

  This working paper provides a survey of the theoretical underpinnings for the various employment guarantee schemes, and discusses full employment policy experiences in the United States, Sweden, India, Argentina, and France. The theoretical and policy developments are delineated in a historical context. The paper concludes by identifying some questions that still need to be addressed […]
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  Working Paper No. 497

  Surveying American Jews and Their Views on Middle East Politics

  This working paper takes up three related themes. In section 1, I briefly describe the issues relevant to surveying American Jews and highlight the importance of authoritative national surveys; in section 2, I note that these surveys have not included much exploration of American Jewish divisions over Israeli and American Middle East policy. In section […]
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  Working Paper No. 496

  Gender Disparities in Employment and Aggregate Profitability in the United States

  We explore the relationships between aggregate profitability and women’s growing share of market work in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Using decomposition analysis and counterfactuals, we investigate whether the contribution of the declining wage share to the upswing in profitability was aided by the growing incorporation of women into the workforce. Results […]
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  Press Release

  Federal Reserve Board Governor Frederic S. Mishkin to Give Keynote Address at 16th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference, “Global Imbalances: Prospects for the US and World Economies,” at Levy Economics Institute, April 19–20

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  Working Paper No. 495

  Gender Inequalities in Allocating Time to Paid and Unpaid Work

  This working paper analyzes paid and unpaid work-time inequalities among Bolivian urban adults using time use data from a 2001 household survey. We identified a gender-based division of labor characterized not so much by who does what type of work but by how much work of each type they do. There is a trade-off between […]
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  Strategic Analysis

  The US Economy: What’s Next?

  The collapse in the subprime mortgage market, along with multiple signals of distress in the broader housing market, has already drawn forth a large body of comment. Some people think the upheaval will turn out to be contagious, causing a major slowdown or even a recession later in 2007. Others believe that the turmoil will […]