Using a VAR model of the American economy from 1984 to 2003, we find that, contrary to official claims, the Federal Reserve does not target inflation or react to "inflation signals." Rather, the Fed reacts to the very "real" signal sent by unemployment, in a way that suggests that a baseless...

This paper proposes the application of the between-group component of the Theil index to data on wages, earnings, and employment by industrial classification, in order to measure the evolution of wage or earnings inequality through time. We provide formal criteria under which such a...

This paper uses industrial wage data and a systematic if unconventional selection of methods to examine changes in the inter-industry structure of wages between 1920 and 1947. We first sort among the available data on wage change by industry and occupation for blocs that exhibit common patterns...

Year-to-year economy-wide measures of income distribution, such as the Gini coefficient, are rarely available for long periods except in a few developed countries, and as a result few analyses of year-to-year changes in inequality exist. But wage and earnings data by industrial sectors are...

This paper deepens and extends the conclusion by Conceição and Galbraith [2000] that, under some very general conditions, the dynamics of overall inequality can be captured using only the between sector component of the Theil index. This paper explores the fractal properties of the Theil...