A sleepy consensus has emerged that U.S. GNP data are uninformative as to whether trend is better described as deterministic or stochastic. Although the distinction is not critical in some contexts, it is important for point forecasting, because the two models imply very different long-run...

In this paper, we assess the degree to which four of the most commonly used models of risky decision making can explain the choices individuals make when faced with risky prospects. To make this assessment, we use experimental evidence for two random samples of young adults. Using a robust,...

A more powerful version of the ADF test and a test that has trend stationarity as the null are applied to U.S. GNP. Simulated critical values generated from plausible trend and difference stationary models are used in order to minimize possible finite sample biases. The discriminatory power of...

No, and maybe not. [additional text from author's introduction] To us, the possibility of providing a compelling case that real GMP is either trend or difference stationary seems extremely small, certainly on the basis of post-war data. This is because there is only one difference between these...

Estimates of the natural or full employment level of real GNP have usually been obtained by statistical detrending procedures which assume independence between trend and cycle. This paper presents an alternative approach which says that the natural level should be measured in the context of a...

This paper uses the sequence of government budget constraints to motivate estimates of interest payments on the U.S. Federal government debt. We explain why our estimates differ conceptually and quantitatively from those reported by the U.S. government. We use our estimates to account for...

Not all of that extra output will remain in the United States. If the trade deficit is reduced by three percent of GDP, the rise in exports and decline in imports will reduce output available for U.S. consumption and investment by about 0.3 percent a year

This paper offers a thesis as to why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per-capita GDP, as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth where human capital is the "engine of growth". The conjecture is that the ascendancy of the US...

We investigate the possibility that the large current account deficits of the U.S. are the outcome of optimizing behavior. We develop a simple long-run world equilibrium model in which the current account is determined by the expected discounted present value of its future share of world GDP...

This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution...