Do students benefit from compulsory schooling? Researchers using changes in compulsory schooling laws as instruments have typically estimated very high returns to additional schooling that are greater than the corresponding OLS estimates and concluded that the group of individuals who are...

We examine a "Rotten Kid" model (Becker 1974) where a player with social preferences interacts with an egoistic player. We assume that social preferences are intention-based rather than outcome-based. In a very general multi-stage setting we show that any equilibrium must involve mutually unkind...

A large literature has documented a significant increase in the return to college over the past 30 years. This increase is typically measured using nominal wages. I show that from 1980 to 2000, college graduates have increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas that are characterized by a...

The dangers of shouting ``fire'' in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features, and I analyze why people crowd into theaters and trades, why they run, what determines the...

This paper argues that the stock market crash of 2008, triggered by a collapse in house prices, caused the Great Recession. The paper has three parts. First, it provides evidence of a high correlation between the value of the stock market and the unemployment rate in U.S. data since 1929....

A number of empirical studies find that permanent technological improvements give rise to a temporary drop in hours worked. This finding seriously questions the technology-driven business cycle hypothesis. In this paper we argue that it is important to control for permanent changes in taxes,...

The objective of this paper is to provide, in the context of a dynamic general equilibrium model, an answer to the following five questions: 1) To what extent does an economy subject to regular variations in labour productivity growth differ from one where labour productivity is constant? 2)...

We develop a two-sector model in which technological progress alternatively raises the productivity of one sector after another. We assume that goods are <MI>complements<D> for the final consumers. The sector which benefits from technical progress will see a resulting <MI>fall in its price<D>. In this model,...</d></mi></d></mi>

We analyse investment behaviour of the population of medium and large industrial firms located in the Czech Republic in 1992–5. We examine the relevance of alternative models of investment and test if investment behaviour varies across ownership-legal form categories of firms. By using a large...

This paper has two aims. First, it provides simple theoretical models that highlight two channels whereby monetary shocks have permanent real effects and the interactions between these channels. Second, it presents an empirical dynamic model, covering a panel of EU countries, and derives the...