This paper discusses some of the key contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith to economics and puts them into an historical context. It argues that the work of Galbraith should be recognized as making major contributions to the Post Keynesian paradigm. His work expands on the contributions made...

Galbraith's principal theoretical contribution is foreshadowed in American capitalism and unfolds more clearly into view in his trilogy The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State and Economics and the Public Purpose. His thesis is that the economic ideas that once explained a world of...

Harold M. Hochman (“Hal” is his universally-used nickname) served as the editor of this journal for most of the past decade. This tribute is written to express our appreciation for Hal’s excellent leadership of the journal and for his scholarship. One of us (Pressman) is particularly...

The voting paradox has been a problem for both the public choice and rational choice schools. A recent attempt to deal with this paradox argues that voting is like applauding at a concert and is therefore expressive rather than rational behavior. This paper argues that such a move fails because:...

Internal Revenue Service data is used to compute effective tax rates for sixteen income levels for the years 1954-82. A model is then developed to explain effective tax-rate changes and to estimate the extent of bracket creep. Taxpayers with 1982 incomes between $10,000 and $22,000 are found to...

Our previous work argued that the official U.S. poverty definition is flawed because it ignores interest paid on household debt. When it was developed in the early 1960s, this was not a problem because U.S. households had little consumer debt. Today, most households have considerable consumer...

Every developed country other than the United States offers parental leave for mothers and fathers paid out of the national budget. The authors say the payments directly reduce child poverty. Is it too costly for the United States? These two economists think not.

Even progressives these days are discussing ways to increase tax revenues that do not require an increase in progressive income taxes. The reason is that increasing income taxes on the rich is a no-go politically. But is a flat tax a reasonable replacement? Not at all, argues this economist.