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...

Gold has both private uses (depletion uses and service uses) and government uses. It can be obtained from mines with high extraction costs (about $300 per ounce) or from above ground stocks with no extraction costs. Governments still store massive stocks of gold. Making government gold available...

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...

In the framework of the median voter theorem, an ideologically driven candidate can fully alter policy when running against a vote-maximizing oponent. When turnout is allowed to depend on the relative positioning of the ideal points of the candidates relative to the voter, this result need not...

Macroeconomic models incorporating multiple equilibriums are gaining popularity and seem to have a strong intuitive appeal. This paper explains the notion of coordination failure in macroeconomics and introduces the papers in this conference volume. It also addresses sunspot equilibrium theory...