The standard model of intertemporal choice assumes risk neutrality toward the length of life: due to additivity, agents are not sensitive to a mean preserving spread in the length of life. Using a survey fielded in the RAND American Life Panel (ALP), this paper provides empirical evidence on...

We estimate growth rates of real incomes in the U.S. by quintiles using the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) post-tax, post-transfer data as basis for the period 1979-2011. We improve upon them by including only the present value of earnings that will accrue in retirement and excluding...

The transmission of oil price shocks has been a question of central interest in macroeconomics since the 1970s. There has been renewed interest in this question after the large and persistent fall in the real price of oil in 2014-16. In the context of this debate, Ramey (2017) makes the striking...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...