Will the internet, robotics and artificial intelligence mean a ‘jobless future'? A recent narrative, endorsed by prominent tech-billionaires, says we face mass unemployment, and we need a basic income. In contrast, this article shows why the law can achieve full employment with fair incomes,...

This paper concerns itself with the joint effect of implicit subsidies that are built into the US housing-finance system and financial safety net. These subsidies are implicit because they are channeled through the regulatory, supervisory, and tax systems in hard-to-observe ways. In the last two...

Will the internet, robotics and artificial intelligence mean a ‘jobless future'? A recent narrative, endorsed by prominent tech-billionaires, says we face mass unemployment, and we need a basic income. In contrast, this article shows why the law can achieve full employment with fair incomes,...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, a number of economists have suggested that central banks should follow an NGDP targeting rule. Other researchers have argued that a free and unregulated banking system stabilizes NGDP growth as an unintended consequence. We explore this argument in a simple model...

In the economy expectations exercise enormous effects. Indeed, in finance prices and yields predominantly reflect current expectations about future cash flows and future interest rates. Change those expectations, prices and yields change as well. Change expectations radically enough, the change...

While recent reforms are welcome in many ways, there are still significant reasons to doubt that the post-crisis tightening of international financial regulation guarantees future financial and economic stability. The most important reason is that the reforms have focused too narrowly on...

Dodd-Frank is an example of counterfeit reform. It is designed principally to benefit very big banks and it has helped these banks to increase their market share greatly during the last 10 years. The Act provides lesser and contradictory forms of costs and comfort to smaller US bankers and...

Empirical evidence concerning the reasons for differences in unemployment dynamics within the group of OECD countries is far from being conclusive. Using a sample of 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2011, we analyse the impact of business cycles and labour market institutions on total...

We show that, in many countries, tax compliance is volatile and markedly responds to fiscal policy. To explore the consequence of this novel stylized fact, we build a model of sovereign debt with limited commitment and imperfect tax enforcement. Fiscal policy persistently affects the size of the...

We show that tax compliance is volatile and markedly responds to fiscal policy. To explore the consequence of this novel stylized fact, we build a model of sovereign debt with limited commitment and imperfect tax enforcement. Fiscal policy persistently affects the size of the informal economy,...