In this paper, I examine the implications of collateral constraints in a production economy and demonstrate that collateral constraints may have a role to play in resolving two outstanding puzzles: the risk-free rate puzzle and the total factor productivity puzzle. The first puzzle, as noted by...

Evidence suggests that banks, like firms, face financial frictions when raising funds. In this paper, we develop a quantitative, monetary business cycle model in which agency problems affect both the relationship between banks and firms as well as that linking banks to their depositors. As a...

We develop a model of the household in which spousal incomes are determined by pre-marital investments, the marriage market is charaterized by assortative matching, and endogenously-determined sharing rules form the basis of intra-household allocations. By incorporating pre-marital investments...

We produce a model with pre-marital schooling investment, endogenuos marital matching and spousal specialization in homework and market production. Schooling investments generate two kinds of returns in our framework: a labor-market return due to the education premium and a marriage-market...

I construct a heterogeneous agents economy that mimics the time-series behavior of the US earnings distribution from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks driving the model using data on income inequality, on...

This paper contributes to the literature comparing the relative performance of financial intermediaries and markets by studying an environment in which a trade-off between risk sharing and growth arises endogenously. Financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity...

This paper studies the provision of incentives to reallocate capital when managers are reluctant to relinquish control and have private information about the productivity of assets under their control. We show that when managers get private benefits from running projects substantial bonuses are...