The authors introduce an element of centralization in a random matching model of money that allows for private liabilities to circulate as media of exchange. Some agents, which the authors identify as banks, are endowed with the technology to issue notes and to record-keep reserves with a...

We develop a quantitative life-cycle theory of occupational choice decisions, economic inequality, and financial frictions. The model is calibrated to life-cycle evidence on occupational choices and their persistence, earnings inequality, and consumption inequality in the Brazilian data. An...

There is a negative mean-dispersion relationship between the log of mean annual hours in an occupation and the standard deviation of log annual hours in that occupation. We document this pattern using data from the 1976-2011 Current Population Survey (CPS) and various Survey of Income and...

This paper studies the role of social security and tax and transfer programs for understanding cross-country differences in labor supply late in the life cycle. First, we use the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) as well as the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to...

There is a negative mean-dispersion relationship between the log of mean annual hours in an occupation and the standard deviation of log annual hours in that occupation. We document this pattern using data from the 1976-2011 Current Population Survey (CPS) and various Survey of Income and...

We propose a theory where capital market imperfections are at the origin of cross-country TFP differences. In our theory entrepreneurs have private information about the multifactor productivity of their technology. We study how the contracting environment, as described by the ability to enforce...

In this paper, we develop a model of money and reserve-holding banks. We allow for private liabilities to circulate as media of exchange in a random-matching framework. Some individuals, which we identify as banks, are endowed with a technology to issue private notes and to keep reserves with a...

We build a heterogeneous life-cycle model which captures a large number of salient features of individual labor supply over the life cycle, by education, both along the intensive and extensive margins. The model provides an aggregation theory of individual labor supply, firmly grounded on...

There are substantial cross-country differences in labor supply late in the life cycle (age 50+). A theory of labor supply and retirement decisions is developed to quantitatively assess the role of social security, disability insurance, and taxation for understanding differences in labor supply...

An important feature of the U.S. labor market is that, even after controlling for measurable differences in education and experience, the average wage of women with children is 89 percent of the average wage of women without children. This "family gap" in wages accounts for almost half the...