A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds the one of capitalists. We make this point in an...

We study a general equilibrium model where agents’ preferences, productivity and labor endowments depend on their health status, and occupational choices affect individual health distributions. Efficiency typically requires agents of the same type to obtain different expected utilities if...

This study designs a laboratory experiment to investigate the link between personal responsibility and individual preferences for redistribution. We contribute to the literature by considering two key insights: first, effort is costly; second, its fruits can be grasped only in the future....

We consider a model of occupational choice with credit market imperfections and local non convexities in education investment. The implications of individual heterogeneity for the evolution of wealth distribution and policies are studied. Convergence of the wealth distribution is obtained...

In the presence of transactions costs, no matter how small, arbitrage activity does not necessarily render equal all riskless rates of return. When two such rates follow stochastic processes, it is not optimal immediately to arbitrage out any discrepancy that arises between them. The reason is...

We review different empirical approaches that researchers have taken to estimate how consumption responds to income changes. We critically evaluate the empirical evidence on the sensitivity of consumption to predicted income changes, distinguishing between the traditional excess sensitivity...

The theoretical literature suggests that taxation can have a large impact on household portfolio selection and allocation. In this paper we consider the tax treatment of life insurance, considering the cancellation of tax incentives in Italian life insurance contracts for investors with high...

This paper derives and estimates a model where durable and non-durable consumption are allowed to be non-separable in utility and individuals face a convex adjustment cost whenever they want to purchase a new durable good. Subjective expectations data allow to identify and estimate the marginal...

This paper deals with the estimation of the Euler Equation when durable consumption is taken into account. If durables are not separable in utility from non-durables, estimating the Euler Equation without conditioning on them leads to incorrect inference. I use microdata on non-durable and...

Bankruptcy acts as insurance if the decision to default is negatively correlated with income shocks. However, whether bankruptcy provides insurance is dependent on the punishment for default. Such rules can instead cause the consumer to be credit constrained. If debts are not fully enforceable,...