There is pervasive evidence that individuals invest primarily in domestic assets and thus hold poorly diversified portfolios. Empirical studies suggest that informational asymmetries may play a role in explaining the bias towards domestic assets. In contrast, theoretical studies based on...

We use a simple model of statistical discrimination to empirically disentangle two different sources of racial wage inequality: differences in the distribution of pre-market factors that affect human capital, and differences in incentives to acquire human capital when young. We show how the...

This paper explores the implications of culturally biased testing for the employment decisions of firms. Only the workers know whether they can do the job or not so firms test them. Wages are made contingent on the test results which are public information. The threshold result for hiring...

I analyze the implications of moral hazard in dynamic economy with production. In particular, I add agency frictions to a benchmark stochastic growth model, by assuming that firms observe output but hours worked and productivity are unobservable. I cast the problem as a continuous time principal...

This paper studies dynamic non-linear taxation in a two-period model without government commitment and a continuum of agents with privately known skill parameters, which are constant overtime. The government is utilitarian but cannot commit at t=1 to the tax scheme that she will propose at t=2....