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...

The tax reform literature, pioneered by Guesnerie [1977], uses static models but views tax reform as a dynamic process, i.e., as a policy-maker implementing incremental reforms over time. This paper studies tax reform in a dynamic version of the Diamond-Mirrlees-Guesnerie model and focuses on a...

Willig (1976) argues that the change in consumer's surplus is often a good approximation to the willingness to pay for a price change: if the income elasticity of demand is small, or the price change is small, then the percentage error from using consumer's surplus is small. If the price of a...

We use household survey data to construct a direct measure of absolute risk aversion based on the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay to buy a risky asset. We relate this measure to a set of consumers' decisions that in theory should vary with attitude towards risk. We find that elicited...

This paper introduces a tractable, structural model of subjective beliefs. Since agents that plan for the future care about expected future utility flows, current felicity can be increased by believing that better outcomes are more likely. On the other hand, expectations that are biased towards...

Recent studies have drawn attention to high prevalence of stunting among children in rural India. In fact, these estimates point to more pervasive deprivation than conventional measures of poverty based on income or consumption expenditure shortfalls. Since stunting measures chronic...

Entre 1984 y 2002 se presentó una caída permanente en la propo0rción de hogares colombianos que utilizan personal asalariado para trabajo doméstico. Utilizamos un modelo teórico de la decisión del hogar de tener o no tener servicio doméstico y estimamos dicha probabilidad. Ésta se ve...

Efficient investment in human capital is a subject of great concern among economists. By means of an overlapping-generations macrodynamic model with credit constraints, imperfect insurance and exogenous labor supply, we appraise inefficiencies related to misinvestment in human capital and...

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...