A sharp increase in the real interest rates in the U.S. in the 1980s was expected to induce a higher personal saving rate. Actually, between 1981 and 1983 the personal saving rate fell from 7.5 percent to 5.4 percent and for the 1985-1988 period it had averaged only 4 percent even though real...

Among the interesting changes in the U.S. economy in recent years have been the substantial changes in the age distribution of income and its components. These changes are interesting in and of themselves, but also are an important background against which to interpret aggregate economic...

The substantial post war decline in the U.S. saving rate has added great impetus to the debate over whether public debt policy crowds out saving. Rather than attempting to reject specific saving models, empirical research on debt policy and savings has primarily focused on the impact of...

A new empirical analysis of aggregate United States consumption and saving for the period 1947-80 is presented. The model is based on the theory of exact aggregation. It recognizes explicitly that households with different characteristics may be heterogeneous in their behavior and that aggregate...

A new empirical analysis of aggregate United States consumption and saving for the period 1947-80 is presented. The model is based on the theory of exact aggregation. It recognizes explicitly that households with different characteristics may be heterogeneous in their behavior and that aggregate...

This paper presents new updated and improved estimates of various components of governments' contribution to national wealth and its growth in the post-war period. The primary conclusions drawn are: (1). The federal government's assets, tangible and financial, are substantial; they grew more...

Using data on U.S. state and federal taxes and transfers over a quarter century, we estimate a regression model that yields the marginal effect of any shift of market income share from one quintile to another on the entire post tax, post-transfer income distribution. We identify exogenous income...