This paper analyzes the duration of large economic declines and provides a theory of delayed recovery. First, we develop a formal political economy model that illustrates a simple mechanism of how weak constraints on the political executive can lead to longer declines in ethnically heterogeneous...

This paper is concerned with occupational choice under risk, where agents care about their social status. It is motivated by recent developments in the 'New Economy', which indicate that status preferences possibly provide an explanation for the observed shift towards entrepreneurial...

"The economic approach to cities relies on a spatial equilibrium for workers, employers and builders. The worker's equilibrium implies that positive attributes in one location, like access to downtown or high wages, are offset by negative attributes, like high housing prices. The employer's...

This paper investigates the effects of monopolistic competition on entrepreneurial risk-taking in a general equilibrium model. In this context, occupational choice of risk averse agents is biased towards firm ownership. In this case, the inefficiencies due to the presence of non-diversifiable...