Gold has both private uses (depletion uses and service uses) and government uses. It can be obtained from mines with high extraction costs and quantitatively the gain in welfare and its distribution. Any policy in a class maximizes welfare from private uses. One policy involves selling all...

While macroeconometricians continue to dispute the size, timing, and even the existence of effects of monetary policy, political economists often find large effects of political variables and often attribute the effects to manipulation of the Fed. Since the political econometricians often use...