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Report No. 1
Report February 2004
Like a recurrent nightmare, the Bush administration, apparently emboldened by its success in getting Congress to start down the road to privatizing Medicare, seems ready to resurrect its proposals to privatize Social Security. Senior Scholar Thomas Hungerford comments in this issue of the Report. Contents: Comment, "Saving Social Security from Those Who Would ‘Save’ It" […]
Working Paper No. 401
Borrowing Alone
Over the past 20 years, finance has become commodified. Firms increasingly obtain finance from securities markets, instead of borrowing from commercial banks with which they have long-term relationships, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac package a growing number of mortgages into bonds. When loans are priced by impersonal markets rather than by individual bankers, they […]
Working Paper No. 400
Fiscal Consolidation
This paper analyzes the issues of public finance sustainability and suitability of strategies aimed at fiscal consolidation. Contrasting growth-based versus thrift-based consolidation strategies, it is argued that in the light of theory only the former promises success in large economies. Empirically, this study investigates the experiences with consolidation over the 1990s in the US, Japan, […]
Working Paper No. 399
Does Financial Structure Matter?
We address the issue of whether financial structure influences economic growth. Three competing views of financial structure exist in the literature: the bank-based, the market-based and the financial services view. Recent empirical studies examine their relevance by utilizing panel and cross-section approaches. This paper, for the first time ever, utilizes time series data and methods, […]
Working Paper No. 398
Inequality of the Distribution of Personal Wealth in Germany, 1973–1998
This paper reports on trends in inequality of the distribution of household disposable wealth in West Germany from 1973 to 1998, and compares the changes in the size distribution of household disposable wealth in West and East Germany between 1993 and 1998. The empirical findings are based on several cross sections of the Income and […]
Summary No. 1
Summary Winter 2004
The Winter Summary highlights the recent Levy Institute conference "International Perspectives on Household Wealth," which focused on the dynamics of the distribution of wealth across population subgroups, income levels, and regions. A common finding was the rapid growth in wealth, but increasing inequality, during the 1990s as a result of the euphoria in the financial […]
Press Release
New Institutions Needed to Boost Foreign Investment in Developing Nations, New Levy Institute Report Says
Press Release
Weak Dollar Poses Hazards to US Economy, but Could Help Boost Growth in Developing Countries
Press Release
Levy Institute Conference Gathers Leading Economists, Social Scientists, and Other Analysts to Explore the Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation
Research Project Report
Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being
The Levy Economics Institute has, since its inception, maintained an active research program on the distribution of earnings, income, and wealth. Experience from the 1990s suggests that economic growth alone cannot dramatically reduce economic inequality. Because we are concerned with the improvement of well being, we have initiated a research project, the Levy Institute Measure […]
Press Release
US Economy May Still Face Long-Term Deflationary Risks, According to New Levy Economics Institute Study
Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 75
Is Financial Globalization Truly Global?
In 2002 more than $1 trillion worth of new bonds was sold across international boundaries. The total stock of cross-border bond holdings was more than $9 trillion. Such lending, together with sales of equities, is regarded as one of the chief benefits of globalization. But financial investment does not always flow where it is needed […]