Policy Watch: Cutting Capital Gains Taxes

By Gerald E. Auten and Joseph J. Cordes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

From 1922 to 1986, long-term capital gains were taxed at lower rates than other income, generally by allowing a portion of long-term capital gains to be excluded from taxable income. While taxing capital gains at the same rates as other income has been ha...

Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias

By Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

A wine-loving economist we know purchased some nice Bordeaux wines years ago at low prices. The wines have greatly appreciated in value, so that a bottle that cost only $10 when purchased would now fetch $200 at auction. This economist now drinks some of ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Correspondence

By Gregory Clark

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Correspondence and response regarding: The Long-term Decline in Real Interest Rates

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Strengthening the Economy by Rethinking the Role of Federal and State Governments

By Alice M. Rivlin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This lecture brings together two subjects that are not often discussed together: national economic policy and the structure of American federalism. My thesis is that the policies needed to improve the health of the U.S. economy over the next decade or two...

Symposium on Organizations and Economics

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Organizations and Markets

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Herbert A. Simon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

The economies of modern industrialized society can more appropriately be labeled organizational economies than market economies. Thus, even market-driven capitalist economies need a theory of organizations as much as they need a theory of markets. The att...

Incentives in Principal-Agent Relationships

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By David E. M. Sappington

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This article identifies some of the major issues that have been examined in the literature on incentives. The article begins by discussing the frictions that lie at the heart of incentive problems. Next, the principal's optimal response to these frictions...

Fallibility in Human Organizations and Political Systems

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Raaj Kumar Sah

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This paper presents a perspective on some organizational consequences of human fallibility. It may be easier to get a flavor of the relevant issues by examining the role of fallibility in specific settings, rather than through abstract arguments. So, in t...

Labor Economics and the Psychology of Organizations

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Edward P. Lazear

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This essay is a discussion of how economists are attempting to understand institutions within the organizations of the labor market. The institutions and issues discussed include mandatory retirement; discontinuous jumps in wages; pay compression; rights ...

Economic Perspectives on Privatization

By John Vickers and George Yarrow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Despite being one of the most fundamental issues in political economy, the question of the appropriate boundary between public and private enterprise received relatively little attention in mainstream economic analysis until quite recently. In the 1980s, ...

Do Individual Retirement Accounts Increase Savings?

By Jane G. Gravelle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Do IRAs increase savings or are they merely a windfall for otherwise well-off taxpayers? A major objective of universal IRAs was to encourage saving for retirement. A spirited debate has ensued over the use of IRA tax deductions as a means of promoting pr...

Historical Research on International Lending and Debt

By Barry Eichengreen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

The parallels between debt crises past and present have attracted a large number of social scientists to the history of foreign lending and default. In this article, I describe the findings of the recent literature on the subject. The questions posed have...

Are Economists Different, and If So, Why?

By John R. Carter and Michael D. Irons

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Do economists behave differently from noneconomists? Some evidence suggests they do. In a well-known 1981 study in the Journal of Public Economics, Gerald Marwell and Ruth E. Ames found that free riding was significantly greater among a group of economics...

Nobel Laureate: The Many Other Allais Paradoxes

By Bertrand R. Munier

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Maurice Allais is know for the 1952 "Allais paradox," but other very important parts of his work remain virtually unknown to most economists. As Paul Samuelson (1983) wrote, "Had Allais' earliest writings been in English, a whole generation of economic th...

Retrospectives: Challenges to Free Trade

By Douglas A. Irwin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

The recent theoretical literature on strategic trade policy suggests that government intervention in international trade has the potential to be welfare improving. Government promotion of exports from imperfectly competitive industries, for example, may e...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Correspondent: Keynes as a Noise Trader

By Robert Piron

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991