Prosperity, Depression and Modern Capitalism
质疑了将美国繁荣与欧洲萧条简单归因于税负差异的观点，指出欧洲与美国在历史、文化和消费压力上的不同，认为现代资本主义的市场投资可能使人们偏离真实偏好而延长工作时间。
Prominent figures in our profession have quite recently offered clear cut views on the present distribution of prosperity and depression among the advanced industrial countries, see for example, Lucas (2003), Prescott (2002): prosperity is identified with the United States, depression with Western Europe, and they relate this to the lower burden of taxation in the United States. The gap in the chosen level of performance (output per capita) is very large, about 30%, and the remedy is clear: cut taxes in Europe. But Europe is different from America: for deep historical, cultural reasons, but partly because the pressures to consume are different. There can be no easy inference about relative prosperity: the market investment of modern capitalism can drive people towards longer hours of work and away from their underlying (meta) preferences.