This paper examines a broad set of alternative temporal cross- section specifications of the demand for money as a means of estimating the degree of substitution between demand deposits and other liquid assets. Despite differences in data bases, model specifications and estimation techniques,...

This paper examines the relationship between fertility and human capital investment, and it’s implications for economic growth, focusing on the e ects of declining mortality. Unlike the existing literature, this paper stresses the role of uncertainty about the number of surviving children. If...

We examine the role of changing mortality in explaining the rise of retirement over the course of the 20th century. We construct a model in which individuals make labor/leisure choices over their lifetimes subject to uncertainty about their date of death. In an environment in which mortality is...

This paper analyzes qualitatively and quantitatively the e ects of declining mortality rates on fertility, education and economic growth. The analysis demonstrates that if individuals are prudent in the face of uncertainty about child survival, a decline in an exogenous mortality rate reduces...

We set up an open-economy, three-country version of the endogenous- mortality model of Lagerloef (forthcoming in the International Economic Review). The model is calibrated to pre-industrial mortality data from England, France and Sweden. Fitting parameters to match observed rates of correlation...

Using data from the Business Surveys Unit of the European Commission, this paper examines how, and how accurately, people assess economic systems. As expected, respondents demonstrate to know their own situation better than the system wide one, and the past better than the future. Also,...

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...

This paper investigates the usefulness of Italian consumer surveys as estimation and forecasting tool over the period 1982-2003. To this end, standard consumption equations are estimated and then compared, in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample predictive ability, with corresponding models...

This paper derives a model of maintenance expenditures from an analytical framework in which maintenance, utilization and service life are appropriately integrated and estimates it with the help of automobile data from Greece. On the theoretical plain it is shown that the model allows...