Mortgages are one-sided contracts under which the borrower may terminate the contract at any time, while the lender must commit to honoring the terms of the contract throughout its life. There are two aspects to this feature of the contract that are modeled in this paper. The first is that the...

In this paper, we analyze the strength and nature of bequest motives in the United States using data from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The results of our analysis suggest that bequest motives are very strong in the United States and that they are altruistically motivated. This...

Recent empirical studies suggest that the average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) has declined. This paper explains the declining trend of the MPC with a standard representative consumer model where borrowing constraints become more relaxed as suggested by data. With an increase in...

The financial crisis in 1997 caused serious deterioration of the Korean economy. We examined the credit crunch in Korea and how it affected household welfare. With household panel data from 1996-1998, we estimated a switching regression model of a consumption Euler equation, which is augmented...

The fact that minimum wages seem specially binding for young workers has led some countries to adopt age-differentiated minimum wages. We develop a dynamic two sector labor market model where workers with heterogeneous endowments of natural skills gain productivity through experience. We compare...

Foreign Direct Investment has become an important source of long-term capital inflows for less developed countries in the last two decades. As documented in previous literature, FDI flows may increase permanently domestic output and represent an important source of technological spillovers for...

In this paper we investigate whether local governments react on the welfare benefit levels in neighboring jurisdictions when setting their own benefit levels. We solve the simultaneity problem arising from the welfare game by utilizing a policy intervention; more specifically, we use a centrally...