The role of the dollar as an international currency is explored factually, with emphasis on a frequently asked question: Is the dollar's dominance declining? The suggested answer is yes, but quite gradually. Implications of this slow decline are briefly explored.

This paper argues that interviews and surveys are an underutilized research tool in economics. In particular, it defends the propositions that the interview method might work better than more conventional theory and econometrics as a way to learn about the reasons for wage and price stickiness....

With a given unemployment rate, duration of joblessness can vary substantially. The unemployment rate will be the same if four million workers are unemployed for three months on average, as when one million workers loose their jobs for a full year. Yet the consequences for the mental state of...

One of the most dramatic transformations in the economy over the last two decades has been the replacement of traditional Defined Benefit (DB) pension plans with Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. Using data from the 1983, 1989, and 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), I find that among age...

The picture of economic well-being depends crucially on how it is measured. We introduce a new measure of economic well-being that includes public consumption, income from wealth, and household production. The differences in scope and method between our measure and standard income lead to...

Privatization outside Eastern Europe has encountered more difficulties than are generally recognized. The firms sold by government are often endowed with market power in part because when nationalized they had been protected from competition. Consequently they are often subjected to tight...

Part of a Symposium entitled, "Say's Law Revisited," this note is dedicated to showing that both Say's and Ricardo's concerns about unemployment were deeper than even the Kates article (in this symposium) suggests, that this concern even led Say to advocate a clear Keynesian remedy for...