This study investigates the reliability of using short-term averages of earnings as a proxy for permanent earnings in empirical research. An earnings dynamics model is estimated on a large sample of men covering the period from 1983 to 1997 following the cohort-based methodology of Baker and...

Without policy reforms, the aging of the U.S. population is likely to increase the burden of the currently unfunded social security and medicare systems. In this paper we build an applied general equilibrium model and incorporate the population projections made by the Social Security...

This paper analyzes the effects of wages and the Social Security System on labor supply over the life cycle. I present a model of labor supply and retirement behavior that includes a saving decision, uncertainty, and a non-negativity constraint on assets. Using data from the Panel Study of...

This paper presents estimates of the part-time wage effect. It also shows that failure to account for the part-time wage effect leads to a downward biased estimate of labor supply elasticities of interest. Using three different datasets, we show that both work hours and wages drop sharply at...

This study uses a new data set that contains the Social Security earnings histories of parents and children in the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation, to measure the intergenerational elasticity in earnings in the United States. Earlier studies that found an intergenerational...

This paper focuses on the recently developing financial derivatives markets, and examines the usefulness of option prices as an information variable for monetary policy implementation. A set of option prices provides us with information on the whole probability distribution of the future values...