In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty develops a new and rich set of data that deals with income and wealth distribution, output-wealth dynamics and rates of return, and has proposed as well some "laws of capitalism". At the core of his theoretical argument...

Este documento ofrece un modelo para el estudio de la inflación panameña para los últimos seis años. Desagrega el índice de precios al consumidor y lo coteja con una medida construida de inflación raíz que excluye elementos volátiles. Los modelos econométricos sustentan que los...

This study assesses the role of Social Security (OASI) and Social Security Disability Insurance, 401(k) plans, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and the federal income tax system in moderating the business cycle in the United States. Using Instrumental Variable (IV) estimation, we demonstrate...

This paper investigates how various retirement institutions impact the macroeconomy. We find that for every 1 percentage point increase in the output gap, net flows of various government programmes including Social Security decrease by 0.34 percentage points, while net flows of 401(k) plans...

To avoid excessive concentration of economic and financial power, Solomon recommends institutional and regulatory reform of the financial system by such means as nationwide banking, restrictions on federal deposit insurance, consolidation of financial regulation, balancing numerical standards...

The latest batch of numbers from the United States makes for a disturbing read. The growth rate of GDP has been adequate, but the current account deficit was 6.3 percent of GDP in the fourth quarter of 2004, and the terrible trade figures for January and February promise an even bigger deficit...

The SGP has been the focus of growing controversy within the eurozone. The ECB continues to argue that reforming the SGP by relaxing its rules would damage the credibility of the euro. The opposite, however, may be closer to reality. Relaxing the rules according to the measures already taken by...

Social Security turned 70 on August 14, although no national celebration marked the occasion. Rather, our top policymakers in Washington continue to suggest that the system is "unsustainable." While our nation's most successful social program, and among its longest lived, has allowed generations...

Today's federal budget deficits are a preoccupation of many American citizens and more than a few political leaders. Is the American government going bankrupt? Does our fiscal condition warrant radical surgery, as some now prescribe? Or, are we in such deep trouble that there is no plausible...

While serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan advocated unsupervised securitization, subprime lending, option ARMs, credit-default swaps, and all manner of financial alchemy in the belief that markets "work" to reduce and spread risk, and to allocate it to those best...