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...

This paper describes the political economy of shadow banking and how it relates to the dramatic institutional changes experienced by global capitalism over past 100 years. We suggest that the dynamics of shadow banking rest on the distributive tension between workers and firms. Politics wedge...

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...