In developing economies, substantial economic activity takes place in the informal labor market, beyond the reach of government policy. Labor market policies, which by definition apply only to the formal-sector labor market, then have important spillover effects. The relative sizes of the...

The main contribution of this work is to provide a dynamic general equilibrium model of asset allocation, allowing to reconcile economic theory with several puzzling contradictions recently pointed out in the literature: (i) the asset allocation puzzle, (ii) the observed time-variation in...

This paper studies optimal interest-rate policies when the central bank operates a channel system of interest-rate control. We conduct our analysis in a dynamic general equilibrium model with infinitely-lived agents who are subject to idiosyncratic trading shocks which generate random liquidity...

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...

In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory which gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can choose to have access to a central data base which keeps track of payments made and received. We show that multiple...

I analyze how lack of commitment affects the maturity structure of sovereign debt. Ex post, the government trades off the gains from default induced redistribution against the cost of defaulting. Ex ante, the government issues debt of various maturities to raise an exogenous revenue requirement....

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...

We propose an approximation method for analyzing Ericson and Pakes (1995)-style dynamic models of imperfect competition. We develop a simple algorithm for computing an ``oblivious equilibrium,'' in which each firm is assumed to make decisions based only on its own state and knowledge of the long...

We study a continuous-time reputation game between a large player and a population of small players in which the actions of the large player are imperfectly observable. We explore two versions of the game. In the complete information game, in which it is common knowledge that the large player is...

This paper combines default, settlement, and repayment history into a unified, dynamic borrowing model of sovereign debt. The model addresses two questions: 1) how the level of debt and the income profile affect the length of time a country in default is excluded from the international credit...