We study the integration process of the North and South Korean economies. Our model incorporates elements that are necessary for explaining closely-related transition experiences (i.e., the growth miracles of East Asia and the post-communist transitions of Eastern Europe). We calibrate the model...

Individuals are born into families that differ in size and managerial skill endowment. Each member of a family has the option to (i) work as a manager in the family firm; (ii) work as a manger in a non-family firm; or (iii) supply non-managerial labor for a wage. We consider two alternative...

We study college enrollment and completion decisions in the presence of risk in individuals' returns to college. Although the human capital acquired through education is irreversible (i.e., it cannot be decumulated or sold off), college education comes with two inherent options: (i) college...

We use novel high-frequency panel data on individuals' job applications from an online job posting engine to study (1) whether at the beginning of search job seekers with different levels of education apply to different jobs, and (2) how search behavior changes as search continues. First, we...

This paper studies the extent to which frictions in financial markets affect aggregate trade flows. I study a model of firm dynamics with financial frictions and international trade, calibrated to match key features of firm-level data. I find that, while financial frictions have a large effect...

Our analysis offers a different rationale for the failure of the Atkinson-Stiglitz theorem than that of Naito (1999). Moreover, our results are in sharp contrast to those of Saez (2004) and Scheuer (2012), who considers an occupational choice model where workers have heterogeneous idiosyncratic...

This paper examines the role of the market for high-skilled labor in explaining variation in the levels and dynamics of the service share, home production time, and market labor across countries. We establish and extend key facts for a cross-section of countries. First, growth in the total share...

We document five facts about price dispersion.

The objective of this paper is to provide a theoretical explanation to some puzzling facts. While among American residents women, Mexicans tend to have higher fertility rates - a total fertility rate (TFR) of about 2.7 as opposed to a TFR of US born women of 2.0 - the fertility rate of Mexicans...

between social security and Medicaid. As a result of these interactions, we find that the US social security significantly lowers the cost of financing Medicaid and other welfare programs for the elderly as it reduces the fraction of households who choose to rely on means-tested transfers to...