Macroeconomics

Time preference is a key determinant of occupational choice and investments in human capital. Since careers are characterized by different wage growth prospects, individual discount rates play an important role in the relative valuation of jobs or occupations. We predict that individuals with lower discount rates are more likely to select into jobs or occupations with steeper wage profiles. To test this hypothesis we use smoking as an instrument for time preference.

This review essay examines whether too-big-to-fail is as serious a problem as Gary Stern and Ron Feldman contend. This essay argues that Stern and Feldman overstate the importance of the too-big-to-fail problem and do not give enough credit to the FDICIA legislation of 1991 for improving bank regulation and supervision. However, this criticism of the Stern and Feldman book does not detract from many of its messages.

In 1990, a new monetary strategy was born, inflation targeting.

This lecture examines whether financial globalization is beneficial to developing countries by first examining the evidence on financial development and economic growth and concludes that financial development is indeed a key element in promoting economic growth. It then asks why if financial development is so beneficial, it often doesn't occur. It then goes on to examine whether globalization, particularly of the financial kind, can help encourage financial and economic development and argues that it can.

Many prominent critics regard the international financial system as the dark side of globalization. But in this book, economist Frederic Mishkin argues that financial globalization today is essential for poor nations to become rich. Mishkin argues that an effectively managed financial globalization promises benefits on the scale of the hugely successful trade and information globalizations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This financial revolution can lift developing nations out of poverty and increase the wealth and stability of emerging and industrialized nations alike.

How can the poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? In this challenging and controversial book Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and his co-author Andrew Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today. They put forward a radical and realistic new model for managing trading relationships between the richest and the poorest countries.

America's health care system is the envy of the world, but it faces serious challenges. The costs of care are rising rapidly, the number of uninsured Americans is at an all-time high, and public dissatisfaction is steadily increasing. How can we preserve the strengths of our current system while correcting its weaknesses? Three of American's leading health-care scholars answer that question in Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. Poorly conceived federal tax policies, insurance regulations, and barriers to entry have distorted health-care markets and inhibited competition.

A novel economic model for reducing deforestation is being proposed by the Coalition for Rainforest Nations at the current United Nations climate change conference in Montreal. A new player in the climate change game, the coalition is proposing economic incentives for conserving tropical forests while contributing to climate stability. The coalition's proposal seeks to create new markets while reforming outmoded market and regulatory mechanisms. From the perspective of tropical countries, this change would make conservation a financially viable policy, with real economic returns.