Many would say that children are society's most precious resource. So, how should we invest in them? To gain insight into this question, a dynamic general equilibrium model is developed where children differ by ability. Parents invest time and money in their offspring, depending on their...

Bailey and Collins (forth.) argue that Greenwood, Seshadri and Vandenbroucke (2005)'s hypothesis that the baby boom was partly due to a burst of productivity in the household sector is not supported by evidence. This conclusion is based upon regression results showing that appliance ownership is...

Between 1800 and 1940 the U.S. went through a dramatic demographic transition. In 1800 the average woman had 7 children, and 94 percent of the population lived in rural areas. By 1940 the average woman birthed just 2 kids, and only 43 percent of populace lived in the country. The question is:...

These short notes supplement the discussion in Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu (2004) on time-use studies and female labor-force participation.

Electricity was born at the dawn of the last century. Households are inundated with a flood of consumer durables. What was the impact of this consumer goods revolution. It is argued here that the consumer goods revolution was conducive to liberating women from the home. To analyze this...

A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: -Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. -The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period....

Societies socialize children about sex. This is done in the presence of peer-group effects, which may encourage undesirable behavior. Parents want the best for their children. Still, they weigh the marginal gains from socializing their children against its costs. Churches and states may...

How important is financial development for economic development? A costly state veriÂ…cation model of financial intermediation is presented to address this question. The model is calibrated to match facts about the U.S. economy, such as the intermediation spreads and the firm-size...

The welfare gain to consumers from the introduction of personal computers is estimated here. A simple model of consumer demand is formulated that uses a slightly modified version of standard preferences. The modification permits marginal utility, and hence total utility, to be finite when the...