This paper examines matched point and density forecasts of inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to analyze the relationships among expected inflation, disagreement, and uncertainty. We undertake the empirical analysis within a seemingly unrelated regression framework and derive measures of uncertainty using a decomposition proposed by Wallis (2004, 2005) and by drawing on the concept of entropy. The results offer little evidence that disagreement is a useful proxy for uncertainty and mixed evidence that increases in expected inflation are accompanied by heightened uncertainty. Conversely, we document a quantitatively and statistically significant positive association between disagreement and expected inflation.

Recent research documents a significant increase in U.S. transitory income variance over the past 25 years. An emerging literature explores the role of durables in the household's attempt to smooth consumption over these movements in transitory income. This paper examines the degree to which homeowners adjust their home maintenance decisions in order to offset transitory income fluctuations. American Housing Survey data show that home maintenance expenditures are economically significant, amounting to nearly $2,100 per year. We find a statistically significant positive elasticity of maintenance expenditures to estimated transitory income changes. However, the results suggest that adjusting home maintenance expenditures plays a relatively minor role in the household's overall consumption smoothing strategy. In terms of actual dollars, deferred home maintenance offsets on average from 1 to 7 cents of each dollar of transitory income loss.

This paper provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between uncertainty and ex ante U.S. labor contract durations over the period 1970 to 1995. Using a structural identification of aggregate demand and aggregate supply shocks, we find that desired contract durations are shorter during periods of heightened nominal or real uncertainty. This evidence supports the view that labor contract durations respond endogenously to the aggregate uncertainty prevailing at the time they are negotiated, but suggests that risk-sharing concerns are not paramount. The analysis also considers several measures of inflation uncertainty that have appeared in the literature. The results generally corroborate previous findings of an inverse relationship between desired contract durations and the level of inflation uncertainty.

Using Canadian data on large, private-sector contract negotiations from January, 1967, to March, 1993, we find that strikes and wages are substantially influenced by labor policy. The data indicate that conciliation policies have largely been ineffective in reducing strike costs. In contrast, general contract reopener provisions appear to make both unions and employers better off by reducing negotiation costs without systematically affecting wage settlements. Legislation banning the use of replacement workers appears to lead to significantly higher negotiation costs and redistribution of quasi-rents from employers to unions.