In dealing with the problematic relationship of morality to rational choice theory, neoclassical economists since Lionel Robbins have often argued that they can incorporate moral values into consumer theory by putting those values into the utility function. This paper tests the viability of such...

Recently, many economists have credited the late-1990s economic boom in the United States for the easy money policies of the Federal Reserve. On the other hand, observers have noted that very low interest rates have had very little positive effect on the chronically weak Japanese economy....

Over the past 20 years, finance has become commodified. Firms increasingly obtain finance from securities markets, instead of borrowing from commercial banks with which they have long-term relationships, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac package a growing number of mortgages into bonds. When...

Many empirical studies have found that interest rate increases have a positive effect on the price level. This paper pursues an obvious, but neglected explanation: interest payments are a cost of production that is at least in part passed on to customers. A model shows that the cost- push effect...

Using Minsky (1986), this paper attempts to answer two questions: (1) How does policy affect real and nominal variables? and (2) How should monetary policy be conducted so as to improve the performance of the economy? Minsky asserted that rising interest rates, brought about by contractionary...

The first part of this paper is an overview of projections of Social Security's future and an explanation of why the projections have led many to believe there is a looming financial crisis. We argue that any problems to be faced are far down the road and not severe enough to justify the use of...

In this paper, the authors discuss Minsky's analysis of the evolution of one variety of capitalism-financial capitalism-which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and was the dominant form of capitalism in the developed countries after World War II. Minsky's approach, like those of...

Although the U.S. unemployment rate in 1998 was at its lowest level since the late 1960s, the nation's employment problem is still far from solved. Although many economists assume that unemployment tends toward a natural rate below which it cannot go without creating inflation, this paper asks...

During the last fifteen years the Fed has experimented with a variety of monetary targets, including reserve aggregates (borrowed and nonborrowed); monetary aggregates as measured by M1, M2, and even M3; prices, as measured by P-Star, price indexes, gold prices, and expected inflation; and a...

Recent low and stable inflation rates are, according to most observers, the result of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, and most observers do not seem to question that the Fed's sole responsibility is to fight inflation. However, as Executive Director Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research...