This paper briefly summarizes the orthodox approach to banking, finance, and money, and then points the way toward an alternative based on socioeconomics. It argues that the alternative approach is better fitted to not only the historical record, but also sheds more light on the nature of money...

The government budget constraint ties the market value of government debt to the expected present discounted value of fiscal surpluses. Bond investors fail to impose this no-arbitrage restriction in the U.S., resulting in a government debt valuation puzzle. Both cyclical and long-run dynamics of...

In this paper, we investigate the consequences of the rise in educational attainment on the US generational accounts. We build on the 1995 accounts of Gokhale et al. (1999) and disaggregate them per schooling level. We show that low skill newborns are characterized by a negative generational...

The policy focus on excessive leverage in the euro area has raised interest in developing comprehensive analytical approaches to better understand the interrelationship between leverage and deleveraging processes across economic agents. In particular, the interplay between government debt and...

This paper uses a sequence of government budget constraints to motivate estimates of returns on the U.S. Federal government debt. Our estimates differ conceptually and quantitatively from the interest payments reported by the U.S. government. We use our estimates to account for contributions to...

We use discounted cash flow analysis to measure a country's fiscal capacity. Crucially, the discount rate applied to projected cash flows includes a GDP risk premium. We apply our valuation method to the CBO's projections for the U.S. federal government's deficit between 2022 and 2051 and debt...

Political economists interested in discerning the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in...

The German current account balance has moved from surplus to deßcit in the course of unificalion. A theorelical model for the current account, encompassing the elaslicities, the monetary, and the absorptions approach, is set up and lested for Germany and the United States, using cointegration...

In this paper, we quantitatively analyze to what extent a benevolent government should issue debt in a model where households are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks, insurance markets are missing and borrowing is restricted. In this environment, issuing government bonds facilitates...