[Staggered wage contracts as short as 1 year are shown to be capable of generating the type of unemployment persistence which has been observed during postwar business cycles in the United States. A contract multiplier causes business cycles to persist beyond the length of the longest contract, and a diffusion of shocks across contracts causes the persistence to increase for several periods before diminishing. A persistence of inflation is also generated by the contracts. This persistence is represented as a reduced-form distributed-lag wage equation in which the lag coefficients have a pure-expectations component and an inertia component due to the overhang of outstanding contracts. Using rational expectations to separate these components suggests that aggregate demand may have a greater impact on inflation than the simple reduced-form estimates would indicate.]
[This paper analyzes U.S. time-series data in order to study the determinants of the choice between renting and homeownership. Special attention is focused upon changes in the relative prices of owning and renting induced by provisions of the federal personal income tax. The results suggest that about one-quarter of the growth in the proportion of homeowners in the post-World War II period is a consequence of the tax system's favorable treatment of owner-occupied housing.]
[This paper develops a simple theory of nominal income and interest determination under the assumption that the only relevant distinction between money and bonds lies in their holding periods. Individuals take full account of the government budget constraint and do not concern themselves with discounting future tax liabilities associated with the issue of government bonds. According to this theory, the price of bonds is analogous to the price level, and the nominal rate of interest is determined by the bond/money ratio and bears no close relationship to the rate of expansion of the price level.]
Heterogeneity on both sides of the labor market implies that the correct matching of individuals to firms is of importance. If there is uncertainty about individual productive characteristics, there are both private and social returns to activities that generate information facilitating the assortative matching process. A model of individual investment in information is presented and analyzed. A key assumption is that there are no individuals who have an absolute advantage in all jobs. Under this assumption, all individuals view more accurate information as beneficial and therefore invest in its production. Comparative statics are derived and the model is compared to human capital and signaling-screening models.
This article examines the effects of an experiment in the indexation of bank deposits in Hungary during 1946. It is argued that this experiment reduced substantially the tax base against which the inflation-tax rate, determined by the issue of government currency, could be applied. Consequently, indexation was the decisive mechanism making the Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945-46 atypical of other hyperinflations. It is suggested that contemporary indexing strategies should exclude demand deposits from indexation, especially in countries where a substantial amount of government revenue is collected from new money issue.