IF economists could measure the need for reserves, they might be able to agree on the right way to reform the international monetary system. Most of the economists who propose drastic reform do so because they anticipate a shortage of reserves; some even believe that the shortage is upon us. Those who advocate more gradual change believe that reserves are adequate now and for the next several years; some even believe that reserves are excessive. Unfortunately, there is no way to measure the adequacy of reservesnot even to make historical comparisons. Scitovsky's comments illustrate several of the problems involved in appraising the global stock of reserves:

This paper models interactions between a party with anticipatory emotions and a party who responds strategically to those emotions, a situation that is common in many health, political, employment, and personal settings. An “agent” has information with both decision-making value and emotional implications for an uninformed “principal” whose utility she wants to maximize. If she cannot directly reveal her information, to increase the principal's anticipatory utility she distorts instrumental decisions toward the action associated with good news. But because anticipatory utility derives from beliefs about instrumental outcomes, undistorted actions would yield higher ex ante total and anticipatory utility. If the agent can certifiably convey her information, she does so for good news, but unless this leads the principal to make a very costly mistake, to shelter his feelings she pretends to be uninformed when the news is bad.

A club's majority rule defines the number of members that must approve a policy proposed to replace the status quo. Since the majority rule thus dictates the extent to which winners must compensate losers, it also determines the incentives to invest in order to become a winner of anticipated projects. If the required majority is large, members invest too little because of a holdup problem; if it is small, members invest too much in order to become a member of the majority coalition. To balance these opposing forces, the majority rule should increase in the project's value and the club's enforcement capacity but decrease in the heterogeneity in preferences. Externalities can be internalized by adjusting the rule. With heterogeneity in size or initial conditions, votes should be appropriately weighted or double majorities required.

This paper documents changing inequality in employer-provided fringe benefits in the United States using much more comprehensive data than previously available. Inequality growth in broader measures of compensation slightly exceeds wage inequality growth over the 1981–1997 period. Employer costs due to paid leave, pensions, and health insurance fell for low wage labor and rose for high wage labor over this period. The findings suggest income effects as a contributory factor in the relative decline of fringe benefits among low wage workers.

The Incidence of Sales Taxes: A Note on Methodology Get access Benjamin Higgins Benjamin Higgins Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 54, Issue 4_Part_1, August 1940, Pages 665–672, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/54.4_Part_1.665 Published: 01 August 1940

Journal Article Premature Abandonment and the Flow of Investment Get access Benjamin Caplan Benjamin Caplan Ohio State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 54, Issue 1_Part_1, November 1939, Pages 152–157, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/54.1_Part_1.152 Published: 01 November 1939

An Eighteenth Century Record of the Evils of Depreciation B. Greenleaf B. Greenleaf Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 10, Issue 2, January 1896, Pages 243–246, https://doi.org/10.2307/1882384 Published: 01 January 1896

With risk-averse arbitrageurs and an effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal rates, nonlinear interactions among short-rate expectations, bond supply, and term premia emerge in equilibrium. These interactions, which are absent from affine models, help explain the observed behavior of the yield curve near the ELB, including evidence about unconventional monetary policy. The impact of both short-rate expectations and bond supply are attenuated at the ELB. However, in simulations of the post-crisis experience in the U.S., shocks to investors’ duration-risk exposures have much smaller effects than shocks to the anticipated path of short rates. The latter shocks matter, in part, because of the reduction in interest-rate volatility associated with a longer expected stay at the ELB—a novel channel of unconventional policy.