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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 47

  Regulating HMOs

  HMO medicine sets up an inevitable conflict between the physicians’ traditional fiduciary role and the financial interests of the health plan and its physicians. Regulatory interventions, such as the formulation of rules regarding clinical practice, put government in a micromanagement role it cannot hope to perform well. Government instead should focus on building a regulatory […]
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  Working Paper No. 260

  Government Spending and Growth Cycles

  In this paper the impact of fiscal policy is analyzed within the context of an endogenous growth and cycles model. The investigation shows the different situations in which government expenditure can lead to both crowding-in and crowding-out of output and employment. With regard to the cycle, an increase in the share of government spending leads […]
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  Working Paper No. 259

  Constructing Long and Dense Time-Series of Inequality Using the Theil Index

  Year-to-year economy-wide measures of income distribution, such as the Gini coefficient, are rarely available for long periods except in a few developed countries, and as a result few analyses of year-to-year changes in inequality exist. But wage and earnings data by industrial sectors are readily available for many countries over long time frames. This paper […]
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  Working Paper No. 258

  (Full) Employment Policy

  In 1998, the United States’ unemployment rate was at its lowest level since the late 1960s. Yet the nation’s employment problem is still far from solved. Although many economists assume that unemployment tends toward a natural rate below which it cannot go without creating inflation, this paper asks whether the current employment levels are the […]
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  Public Policy Brief No. 46

  Self-Reliance and Poverty

  The United States’ official poverty measure defines the poor in terms of a family’s actual, yearly cash income relative to an estimate of the income needed to sustain a minimally acceptable standard of living. An alternative definition, designed to reflect a family’s ability to achieve economic independence, would instead rest on its capacity for generating […]
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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 46

  Self-Reliance and Poverty

  The United States’ official poverty measure defines the poor in terms of a family’s actual, yearly cash income relative to an estimate of the income needed to sustain a minimally acceptable standard of living. An alternative definition, designed to reflect a family’s ability to achieve economic independence, would instead rest on its capacity for generating […]
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  Working Paper No. 257

  Is Keynesianism Institutionalist?

  This paper poses that the one commonality between institutionalist thought and Keynesianism (as presented in his General Theory) was money. Tracing the origins and uses of money, the myth of the development of money as a medium of exchange is dispelled and replaced with money used as evidence of debt, specifically, government debt. This paper […]
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  Working Paper No. 256

  The Minimum Wage in Historical Perspective

  During the Progressive period of American history the debate over the minimum wage was often between those who clung to traditional economic theory as a reason for not having a minimum wage and those who saw the efficiency-wage benefits of adopting one. Although the latter argument proved quite effective in swaying many state legislatures, it […]
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  Report No. 4

  Report November 1998

  In this issue’s editorial, James K. Galbraith and George Purcell trace the chain of worldwide events that followed from the Federal Reserve’s failure to pursue interest rate cuts. Contents: Symposium: Employment Policies to Reduce Poverty * Wall Street Blues: An Interview with Leon Levy by Jeffrey Madrick * Editorial: The Butterfly Effect (James K. Galbraith […]
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  Press Release

  Federal Reserve Eases Too Little, Perhaps Too Late

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  Public Policy Brief No. 45

  Did the Clinton Rising Tide Raise All Boats?

  During the recent robust expansion only 700,000 of the almost 12 million jobs created went to the half of the population that does not have at least some college education. Even though the number of officially unemployed fell to less than 4 million in the 25-and-over age group, there remain in that group over 26 […]
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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 45

  Did the Clinton Rising Tide Raise All Boats?

  During the recent robust expansion only 700,000 of the almost 12 million jobs created went to the half of the population that does not have at least some college education. Even though the number of officially unemployed fell to less than 4 million in the 25-and-over age group, there remain in that group over 26 […]