This paper argues that preconditions for welfare benefit entitlements based on labour market prospects can be counterproductive when they create an incentive for individuals to abstain from any investment earlier in life that could improve future prospects. Benefit entitlements based partly on...

The unemployment incidence of immigrant and non-immigrant men in Canada i scompared using eleven cross-sectional surveys spanning the years from 1982 to 1993.

The earnings distribution of full-time employee male and female immigrants to Australia are contrasted with those of native-born workers using data from ABS Income Distribution Surveys spanning the period 1982 to 1996. In addition to presentation of summary measures of distributional features,...

This paper re-examines the VAR analysis of the price puzzle with regard to the issues of measurement, identification and misspecification. In an empirical analysis conducted for the US economy, we consider alternative measures of economic activity and inflation, alternative assumptions to...

We examine the relationship between inflation and unemployment in the long run,using quarterly US data from 1952 to 2010. Using a band-pass filter approach, we find strong evidence that a positive relationship exists, where inflation leads unemployment by some 3 to 3.5 years, in cycles that last...

This paper considers a central bank with a zero inflation target and a fiscal authority with a differing objective. Examples using calibrated models explore the consequences of the fiscal authority being aware of the central bank's objective. Situations in which the fiscal authority is able to...

Inflation targeting needs to be supplemented by an economic growth target so that central banks will not adopt monetary policy which results in stagnation. There is no guarantee that the economy will move towards full employment by itself when the inflation rate is kept between two to three per...

When the demand for money is infinitely the interest elastic, injecting base money into the system is akin to money being sucked into a Black Hole. Economics activity will not be revived by driving the rate of interest to zero. Full employment can only be restored by a judicious combination of...

This paper provides new estimates of the revenue elasticity of income taxes in the UK over the period 1989-2000. Observed changes in these elasticities are decomposed into changes due to inflation, real income growth, changes in fiscal structure, and changes in the dispersion of incomes in the...

Along with a number of other central banks around the world the Reserve Bank of Australia has quite explicitly adopted an inflation target. Both the Bank and the Australian Government’s statistical agency (the Australian Bureau of Statistics) report various measures of the underlying rate of...