In sociology and in economics,the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality,price,or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899,the sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to explain the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury commodities specifically as a public display of economic power—the income and the accumulated wealth—of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer,the public display of discretionary income is an economic means of either attaining or of maintaining a given social status.
The Ricardian equivalence proposition is an economic hypothesis holding that consumers are forward-looking and so internalize the government's budget constraint when making their consumption decisions. This leads to the result that,for a given pattern of government spending,the method of financing such spending does not affect agents' consumption decisions,and thus,it does not change aggregate demand.
Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones. The purview of public finance is considered to be threefold,consisting of governmental effects on:
- The efficient allocation of available resources;
- The distribution of income among citizens;and
- The stability of the economy.
Sir James Alexander Mirrlees was a British economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was knighted in the 1997 Birthday Honours.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers,business professionals,and the academic community". The NBER is known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.
Martin Stuart Feldstein was an American economist. He was the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He served as president and chief executive officer of the NBER from 1978 to 2008. From 1982 to 1984,Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Feldstein was also a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body the Group of Thirty from 2003.
Articles in economics journals are usually classified according to JEL classification codes,which derive from the Journal of Economic Literature. The JEL is published quarterly by the American Economic Association (AEA) and contains survey articles and information on recently published books and dissertations. The AEA maintains EconLit,a searchable data base of citations for articles,books,reviews,dissertations,and working papers classified by JEL codes for the years from 1969. A recent addition to EconLit is indexing of economics journal articles from 1886 to 1968 parallel to the print series Index of Economic Articles.
The Boskin Commission,formally called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index",was appointed by the United States Senate in 1995 to study possible bias in the computation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI),which is used to measure inflation in the United States. Its final report,titled "Toward A More Accurate Measure Of The Cost Of Living" and issued on December 4,1996,concluded that the CPI overstated inflation by about 1.1 percentage points per year in 1996 and about 1.3 percentage points prior to 1996.
John B. Shoven is the former Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research,the Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics at Stanford University,the Buzz and Barbara McCoy Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He specializes in public finance and corporate finance and has published on social security,corporate and personal taxation,mutual funds,pension plans and applied general equilibrium economics.
Laurence Jacob Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics at Boston University,a William Warren Fairfield Professor at Boston University,a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research,a Fellow of the Econometric Society,and a former Senior Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Dale Weldeau Jorgenson was the Samuel W. Morris University Professor at Harvard University,teaching in the department of economics and John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as chairman of the department of economics from 1994 to 1997.
Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individuals' utilities,most commonly some form of utilitarian function,so the tax system is chosen to maximise the aggregate of individual utilities. Tax revenue is required to fund the provision of public goods and other government services,as well as for redistribution from rich to poor individuals. However,most taxes distort individual behavior,because the activity that is taxed becomes relatively less desirable;for instance,taxes on labour income reduce the incentive to work. The optimization problem involves minimizing the distortions caused by taxation,while achieving desired levels of redistribution and revenue. Some taxes are thought to be less distorting,such as lump-sum taxes and Pigouvian taxes,where the market consumption of a good is inefficient,and a tax brings consumption closer to the efficient level.
James Michael "Jim" Poterba,FBA is an American economist,Mitsui Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,and current NBER president and chief executive officer.
Generational accounting is a method of measuring the fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. Generational accounting considers how much each adult generation,on a per person basis,is likely to pay in future taxes net of transfer payments,over the rest of their lives.
Public economics(or economics of the public sector) is the study of government policy through the lens of economic efficiency and equity. Public economics builds on the theory of welfare economics and is ultimately used as a tool to improve social welfare. Welfare can be defined in terms of well-being,prosperity,and overall state of being.
Redistribution of income and wealth is the transfer of income and wealth from some individuals to others through a social mechanism such as taxation,welfare,public services,land reform,monetary policies,confiscation,divorce or tort law. The term typically refers to redistribution on an economy-wide basis rather than between selected individuals.
Optimal capital income taxation is a subarea of optimal tax theory which studies the design of taxes on capital income such that a given economic criterion like utility is optimized.
Alan J. Auerbach is an American economist. He is currently the director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California,Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from Yale University and earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University and was an assistant and then an associate professor at Harvard. He was then a professor of law and economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Stéfanie Stantcheva is a Bulgarian-born French economist who is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. She is a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. Her research focuses on public finance—in particular questions of optimal taxation. In 2018,she was selected by The Economist as one of the 8 best young economists of the decade. In 2020,she was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize. In 2021,she received the Prix Maurice Allais.
Damon Jones is an American economist and associate professor at the Harris School of Public Policy in the University of Chicago. Alongside his academic research,Jones is a popular science communicator and regularly provides expert commentary on issues related to economics and public policy. During the COVID-19 pandemic he investigated the disproportionate impact of coronavirus disease on communities of color,and delivered evidence on his findings before the United States House Committee on the Budget.
