NBER Publications by John Boschen

This paper introduces contemporaneously available monetary data into an "equilibrium" model that combines rational expectations, market clearing, and incomplete information about monetary disturbances. Data on the current money stock involve a preliminary estimate that is subject to a subsequent process of gradual revision. The model implies the testable hypothesis that aggregate output and employment are uncorrelated with the contemporaneous measure of money growth implied by the difference between the currently available estimates of current and past money shocks. Rejection of this hypothesis provides strong evidence again at the equilibriums approach to modeling the relation between monetary disturbances and macro-economic fluctuations.

This paper uses contemporaneous monetary data to carry out econometric tests of the "equilibrium" approach to modeling the relation between monetary disturbances and macroeconomic fluctuations. The theoretical analysis introduces into an equilibrium macroeconomic model the availability of preliminary data on current monetary aggregates and the process of accumulation of revised monetary data. The econometric analysis tests two hypotheses derived from this extended model. One hypothesis concerns the neutrality of perceived monetary policy. The other hypothesis concerns the nonneutrality of errors in preliminary monetary data. The econometric results imply rejection of both of these hypotheses. These tests provide strong evidence against the reality of the equilibrium approach.

This study investigates the effects of Federal minimum wage policy on mini-mum wage employment, aggregate employment, and average wage rates. The theoretical analysis focuses on the possible effect of the Federal minimum wage in constraining wages and employment in a subset of labor markets, on the possible responses of labor suppliers to these constraints, and on the possible role of the policy of presetting the nominal minimum wage in making monetary policy nonneutral. Among the elements of the theoretical framework that are both distinctive and important are the assumptions that both the demands and supplies of labor services in the subset of constrained markets depend on the expected relative minimum wage in the near and distant future, as well as on the current relative minimum wage a...

This paper describes an empirical study of the effects of federal minimum wage policy on aggregate employment, on the employment of various demographic groups, and on employment in low-wage industries. The analytical framework permits separate testing both for direct employment effects of the level and coverage of the minimum wage and for indirect employment effects resulting from a possible role for the minimum wage as a cause of monetary nonneutrality. Another innovation in this study is the inclusion of rational expectations of expected future relative minimum wages as determinants of the demands and supplies of labor services. The study finds that minimum-wage policy seems not to affect aggregate employment or average wages either directly or indirectly. Minimum-wage policy, however, h...