This paper uses a model of trade in vertically differentiated products to examine the effects of excessive wage increases (i.e. above productivity) on the volume of commodity imports. The model predicts that for commodities, in which the country has comparative advantage in high quality...

The Alchian-Allen substitution theorem states that an increase of the prices of two similar goods by the same amount leads to a relative increase in the compensated demand of the more expensive good. In this paper we generalize this theorem to ordinary demand functions and show under which...

We provide a long-term perspective on the individual retirement behaviour and on the future of retirement. In a Markovian political economic theoretical framework, in which incentives to retire early are embedded, we derive a political equilibrium with positive social security contribution rates...

A nudge is a non-coercive paternalistic intervention that attempts to improve choices by manipulating the framing of a decision problem. As any paternalism, it faces the difficulty of determining the appropriate welfare criterion. We propose a welfare-theoretic foundation for nudging similar in...

The ability to uncover preferences from choices is fundamental for both positive economics and welfare analysis. Overwhelming evidence shows that choice is stochastic, which has given rise to random utility models as the dominant paradigm in applied microeconomics. However, as is well known, it...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a...

We identify a natural counterpart of the standard GARP for demand data in which goods are all indivisible. We show that the new axiom (DARP, for “discrete axiom of revealed preference”) is necessary and sufficient for the rationalization of the data by a well-behaved utility function. Our...

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...