The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban divides, forms of migrant labour, rapid...

I examine recent changes in labour markets and employment practices in Japan. I find little evidence that Japan is converging towards an Anglo-American type labour market. Mobility rates continue to be low, and there is little indication that this will change greatly in the future. Large firms...

Economic theories of the household predict that increases in female relative human capital lead to decreases in female housework time. However, longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence seems to contradict this implication. Women`s share of home time fails to decrease despite increases in...

I examine recent changes in labour markets and employment practices in Japan. I find little evidence that Japan is converging towards an Anglo-American type labour market. Mobility rates continue to be low, and there is little indication that this will change greatly in the future. Large firms...

This paper explains the existing cross-country differences in household formation rates in industrialized countries by highlighting how an individual`s probability to form a household may be affected by social norms toward the household division of labor. Because social norms are to a large...

Southern Europe`s rapid fertility decline has resulted in a positive cross-country correlation between female labor force participation and fertility. We develop a model with heterogeneity in attitudes towards women`s home time and a social externality associated to men`s home production to...

Consumption in the time of Internet is characterized by extremely low search costs, leading to increased product diversity (the long tail) and large mainstream products (superstars).  In this paper, I show how the mainstream taste can be catered by a niche product, while minority tastes can be...

We model the interplay between a government's performance, its expected lifetime, and the confidence it enjoys. Here, "confidence" can be broadly interpreted as the government's popularity, the size of its parliamentary majority, its reserve of talent, or other factors. Confidence evolves in...

The paper surveys recent work on learning in games and delineates the boundary between forms of learning that lead to Nash equilibrium and forms that lead to weaker notions of equilibrium (or none at all).

Recent theories converge in the idea that international monetary policy cooperation can be counter-productive. This paper reconsiders the role of policy cooperation and credibility in a two-country model with incomplete information about the type of the coordination mechanism. In the perfect...