The objective of the paper is to develop and estimate a non-parametric dynamic model of the marriage market. Individuals are differentiated by their age and current marital status. In each period, unmarried men and women choose whether they want to marry and who to marry. Equilibrium transfers...

The present paper constructs possible baseline economies with an aging population to analyze Social Security reform plans, using an overlapping generations (OLG) model with heterogeneous households. In this model, households receive idiosyncratic working ability shocks and mortality shocks....

What drove western population growth in the U.S. during the 19th century? The facts are: (i) The birth ratio was higher in the West than in the East. Both exhibited a secular decline. (ii) Between 1800 and 1810 net migration accounted for 88% of the rate of population growth in the northwest...

The five-year relative survival rate from all malignant cancers increased from 50.0% in 1975-1979 to 62.7% in 1995. This increase is not due to a favorable shift in the distribution of cancers. A variety of factors, including technological advances in diagnostic procedures that led to earlier...

In this paper, we generalize the notion of Pareto-efficiency to make it applicable to environments with endogenous populations. Two different efficiency concepts are proposed, P-efficiency and A-efficiency. The two concepts differ in how they treat people that are not born. We show how these...

By exploiting more than 4,500 unpublished dowry contracts written in Florence between 1242 and 1435, I am able to present the first systematic analysis of dowry trends and bequest behavior in medieval and early Renaissance Florence. I examine the effects of demographic shocks and changes in...

We develop a quantitative theory of gender differences in labor market participation, hours worked, labor turnover, and human capital accumulation. In our theory, young females expect to face higher labor turnover and to work less hours than males because they allocate time to child rearing. As...