The Consumer Price Index does not take into account the fact that consumers alter the composition of their purchases in response to changes in relative prices. This substitution effect will cause the CPI to grow faster than the cost of living. This paper presents new estimates showing that this...

A number of analysts have claimed recently that the consumer price index overstates the annual increase in the cost of living. This paper develops a framework for studying measurement problems in the consumer price index and systematically analyzes the available evidence concerning the magnitude...

This paper shows how to generate the joint distribution of correlated random variables with specified marginal distributions. For cases where the marginal distributions are either normal or lognormal, it shows how to calculate analytically the correlation of the underlying normal distributions...

Individuals' preferences underlying most economic behavior are likely to display substantial heterogeneity. This paper reports on direct measures of preference parameters relating to risk tolerance, time preference, and intertemporal substitution. These experimental measures are based on survey...

In 1992, the income tax withholding tables were adjusted so that withholding was reduced. A typical worker received an extra $28.80 in take-home pay per month in March through December 1992, to be offset by a lower tax refund in 1993. The change in withholding amounted to 0.5 percent of GDP....

Much of James Tobin's professional life has been devoted to studying the interrelationship between the goods and financial markets. His general equilibrium approaches stresses the interaction of the demand for financial assets with the decision to accumulate productive capital. His emphasis on...

This paper presents and implements statistical tests of stock market forecastability and volatility that are immune from the severe statistical problems of earlier tests. Although the null hypothesis of strict market efficiency is rejected, the evidence against the hypothesis is not...

What shocks account for the business cycle frequency and long run movements of output and prices? This paper addresses this question using the identifying assumption that only supply shocks, such as shocks to technology, oil prices, and labor supply affect output in the long run. Real and...

This paper develops an overlapping generations model of optimal rebalancing where agents differ in age and risk tolerance. Equilibrium rebalancing is driven by a leverage effect that influences levered and unlevered agents in opposite directions, an aggregate risk tolerance effect that depends...

Prior literature has established that displaced workers suffer persistent earnings losses by following workers in administrative data after mass layoffs. This literature assumes that these are involuntary separations owing to economic distress. This paper examines this assumption by matching...