We analyze the effects of cognitive abilities on two examples of consumer financial decisions where suboptimal behavior is well defined. The first example refers to consumers who transfer the entire balance from an existing credit card account to a new account, but use the new card for...

This paper reviews the recently published doctoral thesis of Hyman P. Minsky, summarizing its main contributions to methodology and microeconomics. These were aspects of economics with which Minsky is not usually associated, but which lie at the foundation of his later work. They include...

This paper discusses some issues related to the triangle between capital accumulation, distribution, and capacity utilization. First, it explains why utilization is a crucial variable for the various theories of growth and distribution-more precisely, with regards to their ability to combine an...

The paper makes three contributions. First, following up on Nikiforos (2016), it provides an in-depth examination of the Federal Reserve measure of capacity utilization and shows that it is closer to a cyclical indicator than a measure of long run variations of normal utilization. Other...

The paper provides an empirical discussion of the national emergency utilization rate (NEUR), which is based on a "national emergency" definition of potential output and is published by the US Census Bureau. Over the peak-to-peak period 1989-2019, the NEUR decreased by 14.2 percent. The paper...

The trajectory of new business applications and transitions to employer businesses differ markedly during the Great Recession and the COVID-19 recession. Both applications and transitions to employer startups decreased slowly but persistently in the post-Lehman crisis period of the Great...

We estimate a structural vector autoregressive model in order to quantify four main explanations for the decline of the US labor income share: (i) rising market power of firms, (ii) falling market power of workers, (iii) higher investmentspecific technology growth, and (iv) the widespread...

Can an increasing importance of intangible capital explain increases in markups and profits? I use a heterogeneous firm model to show how intangible capital, characterized by fixed costs and uncertainty, is related to markups and profits at the industry level. The scalability and uncertainty...