This essay examines the cyclical behavior and stability properties of four different measures of the labor share of income in the United States from 1948 through 2006. The evidence suggests that the share exhibits instability. This instability is sensitive to the measure of labor share deployed...

Poverty is a pressing and persistent problem. While its extent varies across countries, its presence always represents the diminution of human capacity. Therefore, it seems natural to want to do something about it. Have countries made progress in mitigating poverty? How do we determine who is...

This paper evaluates the quantitative importance of removing U.S. currency held abroad from the monetary base. We find that a simple macroeconometric model that uses home base has more explanatory power for changes in nominal income than a model using the total base. Moreover, proposed base...

Most governments issue and maintain a national money stock. Their reasons for doing so include national identity, deficit finance, and policy independence. Against this background, the authors examine agents' attachment to national currencies as revealed in the pattern of currency holding across...

We explore the hypothesis that income of the rich increases at the expense of income of the poor. In a simple linear regression model, the relative (to the median) incomes of the poor and the rich are significantly and inversely related. Using standard time-series methods, we demonstrate that...