We extend the study of efficiency‐wage environments via laboratory experiments in three ways. First, we introduce exogenous shocks that increase the opportunity for rejection of the gift‐exchange outcome. These additional tests emerge since we carefully derive a series of theoretical...

The federal government has implemented an earned income tax credit--what it has called the Working Income Tax Benefit--in the 2007 Budget. Edmund Phelps argued that the earned income tax credit in the United States should be replaced with an employment subsidy. This paper assesses the importance...

One of the central lessons learned from the Great Depression was that adjusting government spending each year to balance the budget increases the volatility of output. We compare this policy with one that involves running temporary deficits and surpluses and an average budget balance of zero....

Two policies that are intended a s built-in stabilizers are examine d: countercyclical tax adjustments and schemes that increase wage and price flexibility. The analysis involves rational expectations, policy expectations effects, and a short-run Phillips curve whose slope varies with changes in...

Using a New Neoclassical Synthesis model of monetary policy for a small open economy, this paper explores the impact of an increased degree of price flexibility on output volatility. Previous analysis of this question – based on the earlier generation of descriptive macro systems with...

Blinder has suggested that wages be partially tied to a firm's own price change, so that the key feature behind Weitzman's profit-sharing proposal might be created without the same need for fundamental institutional change. We examine whether this proposal for labor's remuneration yields the...