We develop and estimate an household search model to evaluate if ignoring that labor market decisions are taken at the household level - as usually done in search models of the labor market - has relevant empirical consequences. We evaluate the impact of this potential mispecification error by...

This paper presents a new model for studying international capital flows and debt dynamics. The model emphasizes the role of expectations concerning future trade flows and returns as the determinants of a country's foreign asset and liability positions, and how revisions in these expectations...

This paper posits a notion of the value of an individual's human capital and the associated return on human capital. These concepts are examined using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset returns. We decompose the value of human capital into a bond, a stock and a residual value...

Dark matter is believed to account for 83 percent of the matter in the universe and plays a central role in cosmology modeling. This paper argues that an analogous form of dark matter plays a similarly important role in international macroeconomics. Like its cosmological counterpart,...

Using data from an experiment conducted in 70 Colombian communities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when trust is crucial to enforce risk pooling arrangements. We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and social networks. Both theoretically and empirically, we find that close...

We assess the consequences of substantially increasing the marginal tax rate on U.S. top earners using a human capital model. The top of the model Laffer curve occurs at a 53 percent top tax rate. Tax revenues and the tax rate at the top of the Laffer curve are smaller compared to an otherwise...

An Inequality involving expectations of functions of a random variable is presented and shown to provide the key to the comparative statics of an important class of problems arising in Economics and Finance. The inequality in question is also shown to yield novel generalizations of the...

In this paper, we demonstrate the efficiency of seller entry in a model of competing auctions. We generalize the competitive search literature by simultaneously allowing for nonrival (many on one) meetings and private information. We consider both the case in which buyers learn their valuations...

Starting in the 1970s California's residential electricity consumption per capita stopped increasing, while other states' electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. Had other states' energy use followed...

Chapter in Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, Joshua Teitelbaum and Kathryn Zeiler (editors)