I formulate and estimate a model of externalities within countries and technological interdependence across countries. I find that external returns to scale to physical capital within countries are 8 percent; that a 10 percent increase of total factor productivity of a country's neighbors raises...

We decompose aggregate saving and investment into its public and private components and then document a variety of ``stylized facts'' associated with saving and investment rates for a sample of 15 countries over the period 1975--1989. In order to see whether these empirical relationships are...

This paper advances a highly tractable model with search theoretic foundations for money and neoclassical growth. In the model, manufacturing and commerce are distinct and separate activities. In manufacturing, goods are efficiently produced combining capital and labor. In commerce, goods are...

Do high levels of human capital foster economic growth by facilitating technology adoption? If so, countries with more human capital should have adopted more rapidly the skilled-labor augmenting technologies becoming available since the 1970’s. High human capital levels should therefore have...

Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to an increase in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfare depend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income to...

This paper shows how risk may aggravate fluctuations in economies with imperfect insurance and multiple assets. A two period job matching model is studied, in which risk averse agents act both as workers and as entrepreneurs. They choose between two types of investment: one type is riskless,...

We analyze the impact of an increase in the risk of divorce on the saving behaviour of married couples. From a theoretical perspective, the expected sign of the effect is ambiguous. We take advantage of the legalization of divorce in Ireland in 1996 as an exogenous increase in the likelihood of...

We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income, to evaluate the nature of increased income inequality in the 1980s and 90s. We decompose unexpected changes in family income into transitory and permanent, and idiosyncratic and aggregate components, and estimate the contribution...