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  Working Paper No. 55

  The Measurement of Chronic and Transitory Poverty; with Application to the United States

  This paper proposes a method of measuring chronic and transitory poverty based on any additively-decomposable index of aggregate poverty. Chronic poverty and transitory poverty in the United States are measured using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1987 interviewing year). In an attempt to identify the most impoverished subpopulations, poverty indices are decomposed […]
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  Working Paper No. 54

  Why the Ex-Communist Countries Should Take the “Middle Way” to the Market Economy

  The ex-communist countries of Europe as well as Soviet Union want to find a way out of the command economy to a market system. The common advice (e.g., Lipton and Sachs, Kornai) has been to go quickly “all the way” to a fully capitalist economy. The difficulties of this policy are now becoming clear. This […]
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  Working Paper No. 53

  A Critical Analysis of Empirical Studies of Transfers in Japan

  No further information available.
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  Working Paper No. 52

  Debt, Price Flexibility, and Aggregate Stability

  In conventional macroeconomic thought, price flexibility stabilizes thc economy. The more quickly prices fall (or inflation decreases) in a demand-induced recession, the faster output returns to its full-employment level. An alternative tradition, however, suggests that price flexibility can be destabilizing. If a recession reduces expectations of Jitlzre prices, this can raise current real interest rates […]
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  Working Paper No. 51

  Financial Crises

  The presentations at this conference are by economists from Academies and economists who professionally confront real world problems, either in private finance or in public policy. As economists we accept that the remarks made by Keynes in the closing passage of The General Theory are true: "… the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both […]
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  Working Paper No. 50

  How Useful Are Comparisons of Present Debt Problems with the 1930s?

  My assignment for this Conference on the Crisis ln Finance, as I understand is, is in the first instance to bring to bear the debt experience of the Great Depression of 1929/1940. I summarize first the record as shown in a Twentieth Century Fund report, which I prepared in 1938 for the Fund’s Committee on […]
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  Working Paper No. 49

  The Role of Banks Where Service Replication Has Eroded Institutional Franchises

  Over the past decade forces of competition and adverse economic conditions—combined with regulatory forbearance and the moral hazards generated thereby—have contributed to severe erosion of bank profitability and a mounting number of insolvencies. At least three implications of this erosion may be identified. First, in response to pressures on capital and profits bank business strategies […]
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  Working Paper No. 48

  The Economic Significance of Equity Capital

  I was motivated to address this subject by the rich irony of last year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. The end of the LBO era was crowned by the recognition of work which purported to demonstrate that the value of an enterprise is independent of the volume of its debt. In response, this paper is an […]
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  Working Paper No. 47

  Financial Disturbances and Depressions

  Events of the past quarter century have renewed the interest of economic historians in major financial disturbances. The study of financial crises was common before World War II, but for the next quarter century little fresh work was done in the area. The chief exception was J. K. Galbraith’s The Great Crash. 1929 (1954). Then […]
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  Working Paper No. 46

  Redistribution through Taxation

  Income tax progressivity is studied using Generalized Entropy measures of inequality. Luxembourg Income Study data sets for ten countries are used for international comparative purposes and analysis. Progressivity indices are generated using the Generalized Entropy family as well as Atkinson measures. This is to test the robustness of our observation of tax progressivity in each […]
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  Working Paper No. 45

  Female-headed Families

  Over the last few decades in the United States, the poverty rate for female-headed families (with no husband present) has been about three times the poverty rate for male-headed families (with no wife present) and about six times the poverty rate for married-couple families. This paper addresses the question of why, in general, female-headed families […]
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  Working Paper No. 44

  Accounting for the Decline in Private Sector Unionization

  During the 1980s several qualitative changes occurred in the union decline. First, net gains from certification (less decertification) elections fell to insignificant levels, tending to accelerate the union decline. On the other hand, union losses from the relative growth of nonunion services (structural change) also declined sharply as unionization rates became more homogeneous across sectors. […]