The employment rate of women is twice as high in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries compared to Mediterranean ones while this gap is close to zero for men. This phenomenon is generally explained by institutions such as labor market and family policies. In this paper it is argued that the...

In this paper we develop a new empirical approach to uncover the causal link from social attitudes to economic development. We first show that social attitudes of second-generation Americans are significantly influenced by the country of origin of their forebears. In the spirit of the...

This raises the question whether standard solution techniques such as linearization are accurate enough in those models in which enough volatility is generated. This paper shows that often this is not the case. When enough volatility is generated the non-linearities matter and both first-order...

This paper analyzes the feedback between firms' hiring decisions and the demand for their products in an environment in which agents are poorly insulated from the financial consequences of unemployment. In such an environment, an increase in the risk of remaining unemployed for a long time...

This paper develops a framework with a standard labor market matching friction and a friction in commodities markets which leads to firms not always selling everything being produced and thus to inventory accumulation. A savings glut can lead to a downward spiral in which reductions in consumer...

Changes in the stock of inventories are important for fluctuations in aggregate output. However, the possibility that firms do not sell all produced goods and inventory accumulation are typically ignored in business cycle models. This paper captures this with a goods-market friction. Using US...