We analyze a legislative bargaining game over an ideological and a distributive issue. Legislators are privately informed about their ideological positions. Communication takes place before a proposal is offered and majority rule voting determines the outcome. We compare the outcome of the...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

We study a model of sequential bargaining in which, in each period before an agreement is reached, the proposer’s identity (and whether there is a proposer) are randomly determined; the proposer suggests a division of a pie of size one; each other agent either approves or rejects the proposal;...

We estimate the trend in the transitory variance of male earnings in the U.S. using the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1970 to 2004. Using both an error components model as well as simpler but only approximate methods, we find that the transitory variance started to increase in the...

This paper examines inflation dynamics in the Unites States since 1960, with a particular focus on the Great Recession. A puzzle emerges when Phillips curves estimated over 1960- 2007 are used to predict inflation over 2008-2010: inflation should have fallen by more than it did. We resolve this...

We assess the effectiveness of means-tested and social insurance programs in the United States. We show that per capita expenditures on these programs as a whole have grown over time but expenditures on some programs have declined. The benefit system in the U.S. has a major impact on poverty...

This paper provides sufficient conditions for the nonparametric identification of the regression function m(.) in a regression model with an endogenous regressor x and an instrumental variable z. It has been shown that the identification of the regression function from the conditional...

This study constructs a new data set on unemployment rates in Latin America and the Caribbean and then explores the determinants of unemployment. We compare different countries, finding that unemployment is influenced by the size of the rural population and that the effects of government...

We present a comprehensive theory of large non-anonymous games in which agents have a name and a determinate social-type and/or biological trait to resolve the dissonance of a (matching-pennies type) game with an exact pure-strategy Nash equilibrium with finite agents, but without one when...

We explain a puzzle from two recent meta-analyses that cover 25 countries and claim to show that inputs systematically move from higher-value to lower-value activities despite strong aggregate labor productivity growth (ALP). These papers use variants of the Baily, Hulten and Campbell (1992)...