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  Book Series

  The Mind of Wall Street

  As stock prices and investor confidence have collapsed in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, and the dot-com crash, people want to know how this happened and how to make sense of the uncertain times to come. Into the breach comes one of Wall Street’s legendary investors, Leon Levy, to explain why the market so often […]
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  Working Paper No. 360

  Financial Globalization

  In recent years free movement of financial capital following financial liberalization has given the impression that financial markets are truly globalized. In this paper we argue that free movement of financial capital alone does not constitute financial globalization. To achieve true financial globalization, an important requirement is the creation of a worldwide single currency, managed […]
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  Working Paper No. 359

  Is There a Trade-Off between Inflation Variability and Output-gap Variability in the EMU Countries?

  This paper examines two issues. First, we compare, based on the ratio of output-gap variability to inflation variability, the monetary policy performance of eleven EMU countries for the whole period of the EMS. Second, we examine whether the introduction of an implicit inflation-targeting by the EMU member countries after the Maastricht Treaty changed the trade-off […]
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  Working Paper No. 358

  Threshold Effects in the US Budget Deficit

  This paper contributes to the debate on whether the United States’ large federal budget deficits are sustainable in the long run. The authors model the government deficit per capita as a threshold autoregressive process, finding evidence that the deficit is sustainable in the long run and that economic policymakers will intervene to reduce the per […]
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  Working Paper No. 357

  The Euro, Public Expenditure, and Taxation

  This paper explores the probable consequences for public expenditure in the United Kingdom if Britain were to join the euro. It focuses on the effects of sterling joining the euro (and the associated implications, such as monetary policy being governed by the European Central Bank). It does not consider any broader questions of the effects […]
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  Working Paper No. 356

  Asset Poverty in the United States, 1984–1999

  Using PSID data for the years 1984 to 1999, we estimate the level and severity of asset poverty. Our results indicate that the share of asset-poor households remained almost the same and the severity of poverty increased during this period, despite the growth in the economy and the financial markets. The race, age, education, and […]
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  Working Paper No. 355

  Can Monetary Policy Affect the Real Economy?

  Current monetary policy involves the manipulation of the central bank interest rate (the repo rate), with the specific objective of achieving the goal(s) of monetary policy. The latter is normally the inflation rate, although in a number of instances this may include the level of economic activity (the monetary policy of the United States’ Federal […]
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  Working Paper No. 354

  Should Banks Be Narrowed?

  Over the past 70 years, a proposal to narrow the scope of banks has emerged more and more frequently in financial debates and research. Narrow banking would prevent deposit-issuing banks from lending to the private sector and restrict nonbank intermediaries from funding investments with demand deposits. Proponents of narrow banking defend it as a step […]
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  Working Paper No. 353

  Managed Care, Physician Incentives, and Norms of Medical Practice

  The incentive contracts that managed care organizations write with physicians have generated considerable controversy. Critics fear that if informational asymmetries inhibit patients from directly assessing the quality of care provided by their physician, competition will lead to a “race to the bottom” in which managed care plans induce physicians to offer only minimal levels of […]
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  Working Paper No. 352

  Critical Realism and the Political Economy of the Euro

  This paper is concerned with two issues. First, it discusses some of the main problems and inferences the methodological approach of critical realism raises for empirical work in economics, while considering an approach adopted to try to overcome these problems. Second, it provides a concrete illustration of these arguments, with reference to our recent research […]
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  Report No. 3

  Report September 2002

  Newly released Congressional Budget Office figures show that the government’s fiscal stance in 2000 was tighter than at any time in the previous 40 years, with imbalances financed in recent years by dramatic increases in the level of private debt—a trend that cannot be sustained indefinitely. Summarized in this issue of the Report, the Institute’s […]
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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 68

  Optimal CRA Reform

  At issue in the debate over the renewal of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 are the various yardsticks regulators use to judge whether individual institutions are meeting the credit and service needs of low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. Based on careful examination of new CRA data and assessments of comments by selected stakeholders, […]