The picture of economic well-being depends crucially on how it is measured. We introduce a new measure of economic well-being that includes public consumption, income from wealth, and household production. The differences in scope and method between our measure and standard income lead to...

With a given unemployment rate, duration of joblessness can vary substantially. The unemployment rate will be the same if four million workers are unemployed for three months on average, as when one million workers loose their jobs for a full year. Yet the consequences for the mental state of...

One of the most dramatic transformations in the economy over the last two decades has been the replacement of traditional Defined Benefit (DB) pension plans with Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. Using data from the 1983, 1989, and 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), I find that among age...

Part of a Symposium entitled, "Say's Law Revisited," this note is dedicated to showing that both Say's and Ricardo's concerns about unemployment were deeper than even the Kates article (in this symposium) suggests, that this concern even led Say to advocate a clear Keynesian remedy for...

Privatization outside Eastern Europe has encountered more difficulties than are generally recognized. The firms sold by government are often endowed with market power in part because when nationalized they had been protected from competition. Consequently they are often subjected to tight...