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  Working Paper No. 178

  The Collapse of Low-skill Wages

  No recent development in the American labor market has been more dramatic and troubling than the collapse in the buying power of workers’ paychecks. This drop in the value of wages coincided with a sharp increase in earnings inequality. Perhaps the most highly publicized characteristic of recent earnings trends has been the widening gap between […]
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  Working Paper No. 177

  Taxes, Saving, and Macroeconomics

  Resident Scholar Neil H. Buchanan offers an analysis of the macroeconomic effects of current proposals to reform the tax system (e.g., a flat tax or a national sales tax), focusing on the aspects of the proposals aimed at promoting saving. Buchanan notes that a drawback in the way in which saving is officially defined is […]
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  Working Paper No. 176

  Exploring the Politics of the Minimum Wage

  Resident Scholar Oren M. Levin-Waldman argues that, although the minimum wage is a serious economic issue, enacting an increase in the minimum wage is a political one. He finds that because the empirical results of an increase in the wage floor are “inconclusive,
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  Working Paper No. 175

  What Do Micro Data Reveal about the User Cost Elasticity?

  The responsiveness of business investment to user costs (interest rates, taxes, and depreciation rates) is important in determining the effect of fiscal policy and aggregate stabilization policy on the economy and for assessing the transmission mechanism of monetary policy to real economic variables. Although this responsiveness is central to the theoretical underpinnings of most economic […]
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  Working Paper No. 174

  The Second Generation and the Children of the Native-Born

  Recent discussion and some preliminary research have given a negative prognosis for children of immigrants. Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann and Roger Waldinger, professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, examine 1990 Census Public Use Samples (PUMS) to determine if conditions for the children of immigrants are as poor as indicated. They […]
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  Working Paper No. 173

  A Critique of Competing Plans for Radical Tax Restructuring

  At almost any time there exists a plan to alter the structure of taxation, and their number seems to increase during election years. Resident Scholar Neil Buchanan analyzes several recent tax proposals in terms of their effects on the budget deficit, on different groups of taxpayers, and on taxpaying households as a whole. Buchanan groups […]
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  Working Paper No. 172

  Selective Migration As a Basis for Upward Mobility?

  The upward mobility of Jews who migrated to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century has been explained as a function of premigrational cultural characteristics (such as a tradition of learning) or premigrational structural attributes (skills in certain industries and occupations that could be applied in the new country). In this working […]
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  Report No. 5

  Report October 1996

  In this issue: a summary of a Debates-Debates program on the economics of aging, with Chairman S. Jay Levy; an examination of the "Wisconsin plan" for welfare reform; an analysis of the source of the collapse of wages for low-skill workers; and an interview with New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey Ross. Contents: Debates-Debates: […]
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  Press Release

  As a Measure of Inflation, the Consumer Price Index Fails the Test

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  Public Policy Brief No. 27

  Targeting Inflation

  The targets for monetary policy adopted by the Fed in recent years have not proven to be closely correlated with inflation, leading some theorists and policymakers to advocate the use of a price index, such as the consumer price index (CPI), as both the target and the goal of monetary policy. The authors of this […]
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  Book Series

  Stability in the Financial System

  The S&L crisis of the 1990s led many analysts to review the events that culminated in the banking crisis of the 1930s and the subsequent passage of the Emergency Banking Act, the Banking Act of 1933, the Banking Act of 1935, and other related legislation. The restructuring of the financial system accomplished by this legislation […]
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  Report No. 4

  Report August 1996

  Is the marketplace a social enemy? Is there a role for government intervention? Is downsizing good or bad? These were among the questions considered in a recent Firing Line debate taped at the Levy Institute. Also in this issue: Senator Bill Bradley talks about economic policy, race, aging, and the public’s disenchantment with government. Contents: […]