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Working Paper
Wicksell's monetary framework and dynamic stability
Traditionally, central banks seeking to stabilize general prices have followed policies similar to those advocated by Knut Wicksell: when prices are higher that desired, raise interest rates to exert downward pressure on prices, and conversely. Despite the historical predominance of interest rate-based monetary policies, analysts frequently focus on how prices are affected by control of the money stock (or its high-powered base). In those cases where they do examine the relationship between interest rates and prices, they mostly do so in a Keynesian framework rather than a Wicksellian one. ...
Journal Article
Surplus real estate hurt Virginia
Working Paper
Our money or your life : indemnities vs. deductibles in health insurance
When the value of a medical treatment differs across individuals, it may be socially beneficial to treat some, but not all, patients. If individuals are ignorant of their health status ex ante, they should be willing to purchase insurance fully covering treatments for high-benefit patients (Hs) and denying treatment for low-benefit patients (Ls). But if prognoses are observable but not verifiable, insurers may have trouble denying care to Ls. Deductibles force Ls to reveal their status by imposing a marginal cost on treatment, but at a price of incomplete risk-sharing. Lump-sum indemnities ...
Journal Article
State revenues fall short: problems may be long-term
Working Paper
Getting better, feeling worse : cure rates, health insurance, and welfare
We model a health insurance market where rising cure rates for a disease may paradoxically diminish welfare and even negate the desirability of health insurance altogether. In the model, rising cure rates can affect welfare in two ways: (1) directly, by improving some individuals' health, and (2) indirectly, by influencing the mode and parameters of the optimal insurance contract and, thus, ex post financial wealth distribution. (?Mode? refers to the qualitative specifications of the contract?presence or absence of indemnities and full, partial or zero coverage of treatments received. ...
Journal Article
Will this be cash or charge? Fifth district municipal debts
Journal Article
The EMU: forerunners and durability
The first article examines the history and theory of monetary unions to ask what factors will foster a stable European Monetary Union. It concludes that a decentralized arrangement of national central banks may undermine the EMUs durability.
Journal Article
A Yankee recipe for a Eurofed omelet
The second article, reprinted from the Wall Street Journal/Europe, suggests a compromise between a centralized and decentralized structure for the union.
Journal Article
International trade and payments data: an introduction
Global trade and payments data, although absolutely essential to an understanding of the pattern and direction of world commerce, are not completely unambiguous. Compilers of such data face numerous problems of definition and measurement of particular components of nations aggregate external accounts.