This paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the Lucas- Sargent-Wallace (LSW) "policy ineffectiveness proposition." Instead of testing that hypothesis in isolation from any plausible alternative, the paper develops a single empirical equation explaining price change that...

This paper proceeds as follows. We first identify the essential services provided by a financial system and then derive the characteristics of the system that would exist in a technologically advanced society unfettered by nonneutral taxes and regulations. Next we consider how taxes and...

The American Northeast industrialized rapidly from about 1820 to 1850, while the South remained agricultural. Industrialization in the Northeast was substantially powered during these decades by female and child labor, who comprised about 45% of the manufacturing work force in 1832. Wherever...

This paper examines the relationship between inflation, exchange rates, and the pattern of international trade and payments in a small economy with utility-maximizing agents and a transactions demand for money. Fully anticipated inflation has real effects in the model through its role as a tax...

This paper documents a long-standing stability in the relationship between outstanding debt and economic activity in the United States, and explores the implications for capital formation of several hypotheses that could explain this observed phenomenon. The aggregate of outstanding credit...

This paper documents trends in the sources and uses of funds, market valuations, and rates of return for a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms during the half -century ending in 1977. The major objective of the paper is to construct economic balance sheet relationships based on securities market...

This paper examines evidence regarding the impact of the changed labor market on the higher educational system. Four basic propositions can be drawn from the paper's findings. Firstly, the labor market for the highly educated underwent a downturn in the 1970s, reducing the relative earnings of...

Is credit as closely related to income as is money? Results presented in the first half of this paper, based on a variety of methodological approaches, consistently indicate that the aggregate of outstanding credit liabilities of all nonfinancial borrowers in the United States bears as close a...

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the causes of the rapid decline in the infant mortality rate in the United States in the period after 1963. The roles of four public policies are considered: Medicaid, subsidized family planning services for low-income women, maternal and infant care...

This paper examines the linkages between the Eurodollar and U.S. domestic financial markets. Despite the fact that these markets are characterized by rapid arbitrage of interest rate differentials, it is shown that using weekly data allows the isolation of significant fluctuations being...