This paper analyses the welfare effects of changes in cross-sectional wage dispersion, using a class of tractable heterogeneous-agent economies. We emphasize a trade-off in the welfare calculation that arises when labour supply is endogenous. On the one hand, as wage uncertainty rises, so does...

This Paper explores the implications of the recent sharp rise in US wage inequality for welfare and the cross-sectional distributions of hours worked, consumption and earnings. From 1967 to 1996 cross-sectional dispersion of earnings increased more than wage dispersion, due to a rise in the...

This paper develops an analytical framework to study consumption and labour supply in a rich class of heterogeneous-agent economies with partial insurance. The environment allows for trade in non-contingent and state-contingent bonds, for permanent and transitory idiosyncratic productivity...

Data on the life-cycle profiles of inequality in wages, earnings, hours worked and consumption contains precious information for answering questions about the ability of households to insure labor market risk and about the sources of this risk. This Paper demonstrates that the choice of whether...

During the 1980s youth unemployment rates have persistently exceeded unemployment rates for adults, in Britain as in other OECD countries. In the interwar period, youth unemployment rates in Britain were dramatically lower than those for adults. This paper explores possible reasons for the...

This paper analyzes United States experience with foreign lending in the half-century from 1920. A first question raised by this experience is what triggered the process of United States foreign lending. I conclude that lending was restrained at the beginning of the period by the debt overhang...