There is a large body of evidence supporting the notion that a) those who grow up to be patient(forward-looking) do better in life compared to those who do not, and b) parents can inculcatethe virtue of delayed gratification in their children by taking the right sort of actions. We studya...

This paper revisits the role played by myopia in generating a theoreticalrationale for pay-as-you-go social security in dynamically efficient economies.Contrary to received wisdom, if the real interest rate is exogenously fixed, enough myopiamay justify public pensions but never alongside...

The tug-o-war for supremacy between inflation targeting and monetary tar-geting is a classic yet timely topic in monetary economics. In this paper, werevisit this question within the context of a pure-exchange overlapping genera-tions model of money where spatial separation and random relocation...

We study a variant of the conventional keeping-up-with-the-Joneses setup in whichheterogeneous-ability agents care both about consumption and leisure and receive anutility premium if their consumption exceeds that of the Joneses’. Unlike the conventionalsetup in which all agents are assumed to...

In an overlapping generations model, momentary equilibria are defined as points that lieon the intergenerational offer curve, i.e., they satisfy agents’ optimality conditions and marketclearing at any date. However, some dynamic sequences commencing from such points may notbe considered valid...

Much of Africa has been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. There, heterosexual contactis the primary mode of transmission for the HIV virus. Even when access to condomsis good and their price low, a large fraction of young Africans continue to engage inunprotected sex. In this paper, we propose a...

In this paper, we argue that the observed di¤erence in the cost of intraday and overnightliquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interestcharged on overnight liquidity a¤ects output while the cost of intraday liquidity onlyaffects the distribution of...

Many countries around the world have large public pension programs with signif-icant cross-cohort redistribution. This paper provides a rationale for such programsin a lifecycle framework with search and matching frictions in the labor market. Inthe model, public pension programs alter the age...

In this paper, we study a decentralized monetary economy witha speci…ed set of markets, rules of trade, an equilibrium concept, and a restricted setof policies and derive a set of equilibrium (monetary) allocations generated by thesepolicies. Next we set up a simpler constrained planning...

Rejuveniles are "grown-ups who cultivate juvenile tastes in products and entertain-ment". In this note, we study a standard AK growth model of overlapping gener-ations populated by rejuveniles. For our purposes, rejuveniles are old agents whoderive utility from "keeping up" their consumption...