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.

Our previous research argued that interest payments on consumer debt should be subtracted from household income to measure poverty. We estimated 4 million additional poor Americans in 2007, calling them "debt poor." This paper finds that the debt poor are somewhat like the poor (they are...

This paper examines how consumer debt impacts middle-class households. Interest payments on this debt reduce spendable income and household living standards. We argue that it is necessary to account for interest payments on consumer debt when measuring income inequality and the size of the...

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...

This paper argues that interest on consumer debt must be taken into account when measuring poverty and inequality. These interest payments cannot be used to support household living standards. This makes middle- and low-income households worse off. Recent increases in consumer debt means that...

The typical method of instruction in economics is chalk and talk. Economics courses often require writing equations and drawing graphs and charts, which are all best done in freehand. Unlike static PowerPoint presentations, tablet computers create dynamic nonlinear presentations. Wireless...

It is argued that mainstream economics, with its present methodological approach, is limited in its ability to analyze and develop adequate public policy to deal with current environmental problems and sustainable development. This book provides an alternative approach. Building on the strengths...

Consider an industry where a "home" and a "foreign" firm compete on the basis of both price and quality. Further, suppose cost considerations imply that potential market size is positively related to quality. This paper suggests that it is not necessarily the case that both the home and foreign...

The goal of the present paper is to explore the optimal subsidy of R&D by both the foreign and home countries in a model based on Herguera and Lutz (The World Economy, 1998). While they assume the home country subsidy is designed to help the home country "leapfrog" the foreign, we assume...