I estimate CES aggregate production functions for the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, and Spain using data from the EU KLEMS database. I distinguish between three types of capital: information and communication technologies (ICT), intellectual property (IP) capital, and traditional capital. I assume...

The canonical supply-demand model of the wage returns to skill has been extremely influential; however, it has faced several important challenges. Several studies show that the standard approach sometimes produces theoretically wrong-signed elasticities of substitution, yields counterintuitive...

In a neoclassical economy with endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change the steady-state growth rate of output per worker is shown to increase in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This confirms the assessment of Klump and de La Grandville (2000) that the...

We characterize intertemporal utility functions over heterogeneous goods that feature (i) a constant elasticity of substitution between goods at each point in time and (ii) a constant intertemporal elasticity of substitution for at least one of the goods. We find that a standard (stationary)...

Ignorance enables individuals to act immorally. This is well known in policy circles, where there is keen interest in lowering moral ignorance. In this paper, we study the (in)elasticity of moral ignorance, with respect to monetary incentives, social norms messages and moral context. We propose...

Commonly used methods of production function estimation assume that a firm’s output quantity can be observed as data, but typical datasets contain only revenue, not output quantity. We examine the nonparametric identification of production function from revenue data when a firm faces a general...

We analyze a generalized neoclassical growth model that combines a normalized CES production function and possible asymmetries of savings out of factor incomes. This generalized model helps to shed new light on a recent debate concerning the impact of factor substitution and income distribution...

This paper explores the effects of high skilled immigration to a host country with unionized low skilled labor and an unemployment insurance scheme. We show that such immigration can create a negative immigration surplus due to adverse effects on low skilled employment, provided that fiscal...

We study the role of expectations of naive agents in a general equilibrium version of the Ramsey model with quasi-hyperbolic discounting. When agents recognize others’ naivete, as strongly suggested by empirical evidence, they revise consumption paths, correctly anticipating prices in a...

This paper studies the impact of optimism on occupational choice using a general equilibrium framework. The model shows that optimism has four main qualitative effects: it leads to a misallocation of talent, drives up input prices, raises the number of entrepreneurs, and makes entrepreneurs...