Certain problems in comparative statics, including (but not exclusively) certain problems in consumer theory, cannot be easily addressed by the methods of lattice programming. One reason for this is that there is no order on the choice space which orders choices in a way which conforms with the...

The structure of many models in economics and finance depends on majorization properties of convolutions of distributions. In this paper, we analyze robustness of these properties and the models based on them to heavy-tailedness assumptions. We show, in particular, that majorization properties...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic and welfare effects of population aging and Social Security reform. First, a stochastic overlapping-generations model with heterogeneous agents is carefully extended to an aging society. The model uses the intermediate population projection of the Trustee...

This paper provides a preliminary investigation into the lifetime cost of children upon a household's lifetime wealth. By comparing the lifetime cost function of a household with children compared to the lifetime cost function of a household without children, an intertemporal equivalence scale...

This paper focuses on the identification and estimation of the intertemporal and intratemporal elasticities of substitution for the wife and separately for the husband using individual Euler equations. To that end, the household is represented as a group of agents making joint decisions. By...

Two main results have been obtained on the literature on contractual solutions to the hold-up problem. First, a contract specifying a price and quantity of the final good to be traded will, fairly generally, induce efficient investments if these are `selfish' in nature, i.e., each party's...

This paper develops a theory of outside ownership where such an ownership arrangement mitigates an external finance problem. Part of the gains from outside ownership accrue to asset owners which determines the asset value. The theory provides a context to analyze asset ownership and asset values...

The objective of this paper is to add evidence of job mobility within a firm using personnel records from a single large U.S. corporation, focusing on the determinants of the hazard rates of being promoted to a higher hierarchy level. How to successfully control for unobserved heterogeneity is...

Most existing theories of the firms define a firm as a collection of physical assets, and hence can not explain the firm from a human-asset perspective, which is of particular importance for understanding human-capital intensive firms. To fill in the gap, this paper proposes an alternative...