An implicit rationale for a bank reserve requirement is that a central monetary authority is in a unique position (as quot;social planner) to impose a quot;socially superiorquot; outcome to that yielded by a free banking system. We illustrate how this can be true in the context of a simple...

This study constructs measures of aggregate price uncertainty for four industrialized countries (Canada, West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States) and attempts to assess the extent to which more rapid and more variable price changes appear to have contributed to increased aggregate...

This paper examines the shift in the relation between the inflation rate and the rate of growth of real output which has occurred in the United States over the past three decades, and attempts to assess the relative importance of three possible lines of explanation: a) the new classical view of...

Taking account of the costs of tax evasion and avoidance activity together with the government's costs of tax enforcement it is shown that the optimal point on a stylized Laffer curve is located on the positively sloped region, not at the maximum point of the, curve. The analysis eschews the...

This paper offers a possible explanation for the existence of continual government budget deficits such as experienced in a number of industrialized countries in recent years. Based on the assumption that higher tax rates cause more intensive tax-aversion behavior (tax avoidance and tax...

Over the past two and a half decades Great Britain has exhibited the most noticeable increase in inflation variability among the ten major noncommunist industrialized countries. In addition, there has been an apparent worsening in the output-inflation tradeoff. This paper attempts to identify...

When the Lucas paradigm is generalized to include real effects, the effects of real factors and monetary factors on the business cycle are always interrelated. Furthermore, in such models monetary factors can affect the long-run behavior or real output, contrary to the commonly held view that...