We illustrate a novel informational feature of education, which the government may utilize. Discretionary decisions of individuals to acquire education may serve as an additional signal (to earned labor income) on the underlying unobserved innate earning ability, thereby mitigating the...

Academic macroeconomics and the research department of central banks have come to be dominated by Dynamic, Stochastic, General Equilibrium (DSGE) models based on microfoundations of optimising representative agents with rational expectations. We argue that the dominance of this particular sort...

Empirical evidence suggests that charitable contributions to public goods may be driven not only by the familiar warm-glow of giving motive but also as a means for businesses to signal high product quality. Building on this finding, we present an analytical framework that characterizes the...

Empirical evidence suggests that charitable contributions to public goods by businesses may be driven not only by the familiar warm-glow of giving motive but also as a means for businesses to signal high product quality. Building on this finding, we present an analytical framework that...

Present value calculations require predictions of cash flows both at near and distant future points in time. Such predictions are generally surrounded by considerable uncertainty and may critically depend on assumptions about parameter values as well as the form and stability of the data...

An important issue in the analysis of cross-sectional dependence which has received renewed interest in the past few years is the need for a better understanding of the extent and nature of such cross dependencies. In this paper we focus on measures of cross-sectional dependence and how such...

We present a new theory of wage adjustment, based on worker loss aversion. In line with prospect theory, the workers' perceived utility losses from wage decreases are weighted more heavily than the perceived utility gains from wage increases of equal magnitude. Wage changes are evaluated...

The European population is living longer but retiring earlier. More and more individuals are spending an increasing fraction of their life-time relying on retirement benefits. At the same time, social security programs face mounting financial difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to explain...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when...