As public companies begin their new fiscal years, they are implementing a new and controversial Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB, 2004) proposal for expensing stock options. Applied to 2003 and 2004, this rule would have slashed reported earnings of the Standard & Poor's 500 by 8.6 and...

Real interest rates shifted upwards by four or five percentage points in approximately 1980. The question is why. In this paper we review some of the more popular explanations and point out that they are somewhat inconsistent with the facts. We then present a new explanation which may partially...

Steve's Clark Medal citation mentions his path-breaking contributions to the economics of crime and to the political economy of campaign finance. This paper describes Steve's research in each of these areas, as well as his contributions on a range of other topics. It identifies the substantive...

This paper summarizes the research contributions of Lawrence Summers, who was awarded the 1993 John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association. It focuses on research in four subfields of economics: public finance, labor economies, financial economies, and macroeconomics. The paper...

This paper summarizes the authors work on the effect of IRA and 401(k) contributions on net personal saving. They consider many different nonparametric approaches to controlling for heterogeneity in individual saving behavior and conclude that the weight of the available evidence suggests that...

This paper explores the link between changes in the aggregate value of corporate stock and changes in consumer spending. It presents data on the distribution of corporate stock ownership based on the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances. It also uses time-series evidence on the comovement of stock...

This brief paper explores the likely effects of government-imposed global budget caps, such as those in the Clinton administration proposal, on health care spending. It argues that health reform proposals that guarantee universal access to a basic package of medical benefits create a substantial...

In the last few years, a substantial volume of research has considered the design of taxes to slow greenhouse gas emissions as well as the economic effects of such policies. In this paper, I summarize the insights that have emerged from this work. I begin by explaining that while efficiency...