This note comments on Perotti’s (2008) estimates of the impact of a government spending shock on the economy. In the process, it makes two points. First, it notes that with enough freedom to pick the dynamics of policy variables, the neoclassical model can generate any set of observations for...

While this is typically ignored, the properties of the stochastic process followed by aggregate consumption affect the estimates of the costs of fluctuations. This paper pursues two approaches to modelling aggregate consumption dynamics and to measuring how much society dislikes fluctuations,...

This paper studies the consumption decisions of agents who face costs of acquiring, absorbing and processing information. These consumers rationally choose to only sporadically update their information and re-compute their optimal consumption plans. In between updating dates, they remain...

While this is typically ignored, the properties of the stochastic process followed by aggregate consumption affect the estimates of the costs of fluctuations. This paper pursues two approaches to modelling aggregate consumption dynamics and to measuring how much society dislikes fluctuations,...

This note comments on Perotti’s (2008) estimates of the impact of a government spending shock on the economy. In the process, it makes two points. First, it notes that with enough freedom to pick the dynamics of policy variables, the neoclassical model can generate any set of observations for...

In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of human capital are an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two sectors, one where output is produced by teams and another where individuals can work alone. When worker’...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines on inter-judge sentencing disparity, which is defined as the differences in average nominal prison sentence lengths for comparable caseloads assigned to different judges. This disparity is measured as the dispersion of a random...

We study a model in which two perfectly informed experts offer advice to a decision maker whose actions affect the welfare of all. Experts are biased and thus may wish to pull the decision maker in different directions and to different degrees. When the decision maker consults only a single...

Interest in economic mobility stems largely from its perceived role as an equalizer of opportunities, though not necessarily of outcomes. In this paper we show that this view leads very naturally to a methodology for the measurement of social mobility which has strong parallels with the theory...

Endorsements are a simple language for communication between well informed interest-group leaders and lesser informed group members. The members, who share some policy concerns, may not fully understand where their interests lie on certain issues. If their leaders cannot fully explain the...