This paper is motivated by two facts: 1) There is a significant difference in mortality across income groups. 2) This difference in mortality is getting larger. I study the extent in which progressively of social security is affected by differences in mortality across income groups and how...

Historically-high levels of public debt have recently raised numerous concerns regarding fiscal policy. In particular, should governments tax more, spend less, or do both to manage high public debt? Also, given the uncertainty about the strength of the economic recovery, what is the suitable...

How important are intergenerational heterogeneity and an aging population for the design of systematic monetary policy? We answer this question using a New-Keynesian business cycle model with overlapping generations of households. Our model features rich heterogeneity; households differ not only...

The absence of self-control is often viewed as an important correlate of persistent poverty. Using a standard intertemporal allocation problem with credit constraints faced by an individual with quasi-hyperbolic preferences, we argue that poverty damages the ability to exercise self-control. Our...

This paper puts forth a theory to explainwhy special interest groups are more prevelant in some countries. Its thesis is that uneven industrialization facilitates the formation of special interest groups with monopoly control over factor supplies. An uneven industrial structure is both an...

I provide empirical evidence that badly governed firms respond more to aggregate shocks than do well governed firms. I build a simple model where managers are prone to over-invest and where shareholders are more willing to tolerate such a behavior in good times. The model successfully explains...

Aggregate stock prices, relative to virtually any indicator of fundamental value, soared to unprecedented levels in the 1990s. Even today, after the market declines since 2000, they remain well above historical norms. Why? We consider one particular explanation: a fall in macroeconomic risk, or...

This paper explores the extent to which markets constrain intertemporal preferences. First, we show that without transaction costs, agents are immune to exploitation in competitive markets. In particular, a sequence of trades leaving any market participant strictly worse off (termed a money...

This paper quantifies the size of precautionary savings implied by a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents when explicitly considering the labor supply decision of households. I find that precautionary savings are smaller than if they were measured by use of a model economy...

Several recent papers have used plant-level data and panel econometric techniques to carefully explore the existence FDI externalities. One conclusion that emerges from this literature is that it is difficult to find evidence of positive externalities from multinationals to local firms in the...