Deficit financing,liquidity, and the government budget constraint

This article presents a macroeconomic model in which government deficits are bond financed and the stock of bonds may affect both expected income and liquidity. If either of these effects exists, then comparative statics analysis requires the government budget to be balanced. Temporary divergences from a balanced budget and changes in the maturity structure of the government debt may be analyzed in terms of changes in the stock of bonds. It is shown that traditional fiscal and monetary policies may have a perverse effect; that to ensure effective policy, deficit financing and open market operations should be avoided; and that only policies involving a balanced budget or the financing of deficits or surpluses through changes in the stock of money should be undertaken.     

Taxation and the stock market valuation of capital gains and dividends: Theory and emphirical results

Dividends seem to be more heavily taxed than capital gains. Why then do corporations pay dividends rather than repurchasing shares or retaining earnings? Either corporations are not acting in the interests of shareholders, or else shareholders desire dividends sufficiently for nontax reasons to offset the tax effect.In this paper, we measure the relative valuation of dividends and capital gains in the stock market, using a variant of the capital asset pricing model. We find that dividends are not valued differently systematically from capital gains. This finding is consistent with share price maximization by firms but inconsistent with the fact that most shareholderspay a heavier tax on dividends.We also show that the relative value of dividends provides an indirect measure of a marginal Tobin's q. The measured value of dividends relative to capital gains tends to be higher during prosperous periods, as is consistent with this interpretation. We hope that this time series on a marginal Tobin's q will prove to be useful in forecasting the rate of investment.     

WEALTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME, CANADA 1969–70

This paper explores the sensitivity of the size distribution of family income in Canada to alternative definitions of income. These alternative definitions examine both wealth generally in the form of an annuity equivalent, and home ownership in the form of imputed rent. An adjustment for family size differences is also made. The impact of these adjustments is assessed for average incomes, inequality, and the incidence of low income for different age groups. The adjustments do have significant effects that vary by age; in particular, the economic position of the elderly seems understated by the usual data. Also, methodological considerations, such as the direct use of micro data and the choice of inequality indicator are shown to be significant.     

Money disillusion and stagflation

In the conventional income-expenditure model with rigid wages, the aggregate supply curve is upward sloping. Increases in demand therefore imply increases in real output and employment. We demonstrate here that this conclusion depends on the form of money illusion implied by the rigid wage assumption. If we assume instead that labor supply is more sensitive to price increases than to wage increases, the aggregate supply curve is negatively sloped, and the conventional policy multipliers are thereby reversed. In the second section, we show that this result also follows if labor supply depends on the expected real wage.     

Sub additive measures of relative information and inaccuracy

Summary In the study of information theoretic measures, additivity has been the basic requirement. However it is quite interesting to investigate the sub-additive measures. Starting from subadditivity for measures associated with a pair of distributions of a discrete random variable, it has been changed into an equality relation using another function of a pair of distributions., Under the sum property of the function and the measures, the relation is expressed in terms of a functional equation of which the most general complex solutions have been obtained. In terms of the real continuous solutions of the functional equation, the sub-additive measures of Relative information and Inaccuracy have been defined and characterized. Particular cases and simple properties particularly the convexities of some of these new measures have also been studied.     

Henry George and Organized Labor:

A bstract . Henry George supported labor unions and was proud of his membership in the Printers' Union. But he did not regard them as the final solution of labor exploitation. He championed labor as one of the producing classes. His foray into politics as the candidate of organized labor's third party was characteristic; he had had much involvement in politics earlier. Although he supported labor's immediate demands, he sought mainly to use his candidacy to build a constituency for the single tax. Samuel Gompers , then head of the American Federation of Labor , at first worked for George's election but came to the belief that the unions alone should direct and control their political efforts. This view prevailed, though he and George remained good friends. But it is now a question whether Gompers' policy, at this time, serves labor's best interests.     

Air pollution-mortality models: A demonstration of the effects of random measurement error

Errors of measurement have long been recognized as a chronic problem in statistical analysis. Although there is a vast statistical literature of multiple regression models estimating the air pollution-mortality relationship, this problem has been largely ignored. It is well known that pollution measures contain error, but the consequences of this error for regression estimates is not known. We use Lave and Seskin's air pollution model to demonstrate the consequences of random measurement error. We assume a range of 0% to 50% of the variance of the pollution measures is due to error. We find large differences in the estimated effects on mortality of the pollution variables as well as the other explanatory variables once this measurement error is taken into account. These results cast doubt on the usual regression estimates of the mortality effects of air pollution. More generally our results demonstrate the consequences of random measurement error in the explanatory variable of a multiple regression analysis and the misleading conclusions that may result in policy research if this error is ignored.