The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition articles from March 2003

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition archives from March 2003

Editors' summary.(Editorial)
March 22, 2003... THE BROOKINGS PAN EL ON Economic Activity held its seventy-fifth conference in Washington, D.C., on March 27 and 28, 2003. This issue of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity includes the papers and discussions presented at the conference. The...

Debt intolerance.
March 22, 2003... IN THIS PAPER WE argue that history matters: that a country's record at meeting its debt obligations and managing its macroeconomy in the past is relevant to forecasting its ability to sustain moderate to high levels of indebtedness, both...

Fiscal policy, past and present.
March 22, 2003... RECENT EVENTS EXPOSE SOME OF the difficulties of making timely and rational fiscal policy choices. The recession that began in early 2001 has likely been over for several quarters, but as of early 2003 the Business Cycle Dating Committee at the...

The zero bound on interest rates and optimal monetary policy.
March 22, 2003... THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PROPER conduct of monetary policy of the existence of a lower bound of zero for overnight nominal interest rates has recently become a topic of lively interest. In Japan the call rate (the overnight cash rate analogous...

Policy evaluation in uncertain economic environments.
March 22, 2003... It will be remembered that the seventy translators of the Septuagint were shut up in seventy separate rooms with the Hebrew text and brought out with them. when they emerged, seventy identical translations. Would the same miracle be vouchsafed...

Did pension plan accounting contribute to a stock market bubble?
March 22, 2003... DURING THE 1990S THE assets of corporate defined-benefit (DB) pension plans ballooned as a result of the booming stock market. Because of accounting rules for DB plans put in place in 1986, this robust growth provided a substantial, although...