Since 1991, Robert Barro has been a lively contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other popular financial media. Getting It Right brings together, updates, and expands upon these writings that showcase Barro's agility in applying economic understanding to a wide array of social issues....

This paper examines the optimal allocation of risk in an overlapping-generations economy. It compares the allocation of risk the economy reaches naturally to the allocation that would be reached if generations behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance' could share risk with one another through...

We compare Laffer curves for labor and capital taxation for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries, using a neoclassical growth model featuring "constant Frisch elasticity" (CFE) preferences. We provide new tax rate data. The US can increase tax revenues by 30% by raising labor...

We show that data on satisfaction with life from over 600,000 Europeans are negatively correlated with the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Our preferred interpretation is that this shows that emotions are affected by macroeconomic fluctuations. Contentment is, at a minimum, one of the...

This United Nations Background Note on Macroeconomics and Growth provides practical guidance on how to operationalize alternative equitable and employment-generating macroeconomic and growth policies in National Development Strategies. This Policy Note has been developed in cooperation with UN...

A thorough discourse on the underlying issues confronting the U.S. economy, as well as proposals for fixing the crisis. The proposed solutions include placement of soldiers who wish to remain federally employed in a public works program upon return from the Middle East, replacement of free trade...

The goal of this paper is to examine the shape of the Laffer curve quantitatively in a simple neoclassical growth model calibrated to the US as well as to the EU-15 economy. We show that the US and the EU-15 area are located on the left side of their labor and capital tax Laffer curves, but the...

Hace un año, un grupo heterogéneo de investigadores del Centro de Investigación de la Universidad del Pacífico (CIUP) inició un esfuerzo colectivo para pensar en el futuro de nuestra economía y sociedad más allá del corto plazo. El trabajo que presentamos a continuación resume algunas...

One of the few constants since the United States declared its independence is the presence of frequent financial crises with similar causes. In the nineteenth century, these panics were frequent with eight occurring over the century. However, following the Second World War there was a period of...

This paper studies capital accumulation and equilibrium interest rates in stochastic production economies with the concern of social status. Given a specific utility function and production function, explicit solutions for capital accumulation and equilibrium interest rates have been derived....