Is the current consensus about monetary policy valid? As the authors see it, current monetary policy is designed to use interest rates as a control on longterm inflation. The authors assess the concept, summarize the empirical data, and find that the theory may not work. Supply shocks may cause...

The authors point out a rarely considered fact about monetary policy. Ironically, central banks now tolerate inflation that is faster than the rise in wages. Workers pay the price. In this piece, the authors analyze the new focus on core inflation, and the politics involved, and point out that...

We address the issue of whether financial structure influences economic growth. Three competing views of financial structure exist in the literature: the bank-based, the market-based and the financial services view. Recent empirical studies examine their relevance by utilizing panel and...

Equity prices have been falling since March 2000. How far can they fall before they reach bottom? The current bear market differs from the mid-1970s plunge in equity prices in terms of the causes and, consequently, the factors that should be monitored to test its progress. In the 1970s, the bear...

This paper engages the last testimony of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, before a joint session of Congress in July 2005. It identifies nine areas we relate to the arguments of John Kenneth Galbraith, summarized in his recent contribution, The Economics of Innocent...