Commentary: What Do Budget Deficits Do?

Commentary: What Do Budget Deficits Do?

The title of Ball and Mankiw’s paper asks: What Do Budget Deficits Do? One answer to that question is a restatement on the pure theory of debt-financed budget deficits. An alternative answer would develop the effects on the U.S. or world economies on the assumption that the U.S. federal government balances its budget by reducing spending, instead of raising tax rates, or running deficits equal ...

Diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for dermatologists: What shall we do when we don’t know what to do?

What shall we do when we have done everything we could for the diagnosis and treatment of a patient, but were not successful? What shall we do when there is no definite treatment for a patient? What shall we do when we have no diagnosis or treatment for a patient? Some useful suggestions are presented here to get rid of these situations.

Do Budget Deficits Cause Inflation ?

In 2004, the federal budget deficit stood at $412 billion and reached 4.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Though not at a record level, the deficit as a fraction of GDP is now the largest since the early 1980s. Moreover, the recent swing from surplus to deficit is the largest since the end of World War II (Figure 1). The flip side of deficit spending is that the amount of government de...

Do We Know What We Do not Know? A Response to Celine Bonnet

Implicit memory: what must theories of amnesia explain?

In their target article on explaining functional deficits in amnesia, Mayes and Downes (this issue) discuss the relevance of implicit memory. Our commentary considers a number of implicit memory phenomena that may be especially pertinent to understanding the functional deficits of amnesia. Recent evidence suggests that amnesic patients do not benefit normally from an exact perceptual match of s...