This paper develops the theoretical foundations and the testable implications of the variousmechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition.Moreover, it examines the empirical validity of each of the theories and their significance forthe understanding of...

Using the large-scale German Socio-Economic Panel, this note reports direct empirical evidence for significant correlations between risk aversion and labour market outcomes (full-time employment, temporary agency work, fixed-term contracts, employer change, quits, training, wages, and job...

The law of one wage does not strictly hold, nor should it be expected to hold, in contemporary labor markets. The law of one wage, however, provides a surprisingly good first approximation of the structure of U.S. wages...

We investigate the impact of exogenous income fluctuations on health using twenty years ofdata from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics using techniques from the literature on theestimation of dynamic panel data models....

In 1958 Jacob Mincer pioneered an important approach to understand how earnings aredistributed across the population. In the years since Mincer’s seminal work, he as well as hisstudents and colleagues extended the original human capital model, reaching importantconclusions about a whole array...

State and federal reforms of the 1990s transformed the U.S. cash assistance program forsingle parents and their children. Despite an extensive literature examining these changesand their impacts, there have been few studies that consider the effects of these reformsfrom the perspective of the...

We analyze three related but distinct concepts concerning the renminbi’s role in the globalmonetary system: (i) “internationalization” of the currency; (ii) currency convertibility; and (iii)reserve currency status. Their sequencing in relation to other policy goals such as financialsector...

I document that emerging markets have cast off their “original sin” – their external liabilitiesare no longer dominated by foreign-currency debt and have instead shifted sharply towardsdirect investment and portfolio equity. Their external assets are increasingly concentrated inforeign...

Cross-country regressions suggest little connection from foreign capital inflows to more rapid economic growth for developing countries and emerging markets. This suggests that the lack of domestic savings is not the primary constraint on growth in these economies, as implicitly assumed in the...

We document the recent phenomenon of uphill flows of capital from nonindustrial toindustrial countries and analyze whether this pattern of capital flows has hurt growth innonindustrial economies that export capital. Surprisingly, we find that there is a positivecorrelation between current...