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  Policy Notes No. 6

  The Minimum Wage Can Be Raised

  Survey responses make it clear the minimum wage can be raised. The question now is, How high can it be raised before serious employment consequences occur?
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  Working Paper No. 270

  Can Social Security Be Saved?

  The first part of this paper is an overview of projections of Social Security’s future and an explanation of why the projections have led many to believe there is a looming financial crisis. We argue that any problems to be faced are far down the road and not severe enough to justify the use of […]
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  Working Paper No. 269

  Demand Constraints and Economic Growth

  In recent years the United States has seemed to achieve the best of all possible worlds: robust economic growth, very low unemployment, and low inflation. Many attribute this performance to fewer supply-side constraints, as the country has moved away from stifling regulations and other impediments to trade. When compared with the very high unemployment rates […]
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  Policy Notes No. 5

  How Can We Provide for the Baby Boomers in Their Old Age?

  The search for the solution to the problems faced by the Social Security system should focus not on how to amend OASDI but on how best to achieve faster long-term economic growth. Achieving such growth is better left to the purview of fiscal and monetary policy, not the OASDI system.
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  Report No. 2

  Report May 1999

  In The Levy Report Interview, James K. Galbraith discusses his views on the state of the American economy and the economics profession, including the Federal Reserve’s focus on controlling inflation, monetary policy’s role in lowering unemployment, and the connection between unemployment and inequality in the wage structure. Contents: Ninth Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on […]
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  Conference Proceedings

  9th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on Financial Structure

  The objective of the Ninth Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on Financial Structure was to determine the extent to which domestic and global economic events coincided with the types of instabilities Minsky describes, and to analyze his policy recommendations to alleviate instability and other economic problems. The conference was held April 21–23, 1999, at the […]
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  Working Paper No. 268

  Risk Reduction in the New Financial Architecture

  Five times in a decade not yet completed, financial markets have floated to the edge of a whirlpool. In October 1998, they were about to drown when Alan Greenspan threw them a piece of string that, surprisingly, turned out to be a lifeline. The causes for this financial instability lie deep—in the economic theory that […]
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  Policy Notes No. 4

  Can Goldilocks Survive?

  Growing government budget surpluses combined with growing trade deficits have generated record private sector deficits. Unless households continue to reduce their saving—creating an increasingly unsustainable debt burden—the impetus that has driven the expansion will evaporate.
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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 51

  Small Business and Welfare Reform

  The Levy Institute conducted a survey of small businesses to elicit information about their hiring and employment practices, especially the hiring of former welfare recipients; preferences regarding education, training, and other characteristics of potential employees; effects of increases in the minimum wage on employment decisions; and their responses to various forms of government wage and […]
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  Working Paper No. 267

  The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure

  When the minimum wage was first enacted in 1938, the fiercest opposition came from the South, where wages were considerably lower that in the industrial North. Today, that opposition is found to emanate from states that have right-to-work laws (regardless of location). Using census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for the […]
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  Working Paper No. 266

  Minsky’s Analysis, the European Single Currency, and the Global Financial System

  The paper begins with a brief review of the main ideas associated with Hyman Minsky and their implications for economic policy and the achievement of full employment. There is a focus on the financial instability hypothesis, the role of the central bank as lender of last resort, and the requirements for regulation of the financial […]
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  Working Paper No. 265

  Real Exchange Rates and the International Mobility of Capital

  This paper demonstrates that the terms of trade are determined by the equalization of profit rates across international regulating capitals, for socially determined national real wages. This provides a classical/Marxian basis for the explanation of real exchange rates, based on the same principle of absolute cost advantage which rules national prices. Large international flows of […]