This paper finds that U.S. economic performance has not generally improved under the Federal Reserve, with the possible exception of the Great Moderation. We analyze the Fed and pre-Fed periods in terms of the rates and volatilities of inflation and real GDP growth. Comparing the pre-Fed periods...

Conventional monetary theory suggests that a closed system banking regime may lead to in-concert overexpansions of circulation by its banks. However, Selgin (2001, 2010) argues that this is unlikely as long as there are enough banks to ensure (i) routine interbank settlement and (ii) no...

Solow (1958) argued that, from 1929 to 1954, US aggregate labor's share was not stable relative to what we would expect given individual industry labor's shares. I confirm and extend this result using data from 1958 to 1996 that includes 35 industries (roughly two-digit SIC level) and spans the...