The current trends in the capital/labor split and the impacts thereof on the growth of inequality are one of the main concerns of national governments, European Commission and international organizations like UN, ILO, IMF, OECD and WB. These trends are usually studied at the macro level of...

The inequality growth during the last quarter century is explained as caused by a decreasing labor-labor exchange rate, i.e. devaluation of one's labor in exchange for other's labor embodied in the commodities affordable for one's earnings. We show that the productivity growth allows employers...

The economies of the former Soviet Bloc experienced large declines in output during the decade of transition which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet there are many reasons to believe that measured output and official deflators provide a poor proxy for the change in real...

Various papers have suggested that Price-Level targeting is a welfare improving policy relative to Inflation targeting. From a practical standpoint, this raises an important yet unanswered question: What is the optimal price index to target? This paper derives the optimal price level targeting...

Inflation-targeting central banks around the world often state their inflation objectives with regard to the consumer price index (CPI). Yet the literature on optimal monetary policy based on models with nominal rigidities and more than one sector suggests that CPI inflation is not always the...

The COVID-19 pandemic placed new constraints and prices on commuting to work around the world. However, traditional methods of measuring household welfare (and, accordingly, poverty and inequality) based on expenditures have not considered these changes. First, we present theory showing...

This study addresses the different distributional and welfare implications of price volatility amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, focusing on both Turkey and the South Caucasus region, which have different welfare regimes and patterns of price changes. This paper explores the impact of...