The Uzawa-Lucas model is believed to yield a positive dependence of the output growth on the ratio of human capital to physical capital (an empirically plausible imbalance effect). We show that the imbalance effect become less plausible for a low physical capital share and a low elasticity of...

Cummins et al. (2006) construct a new measure of fundamentals, and show that the positive cash flow effects typically found in investment-Q models disappear when traditional Q is replaced with their new measure. Their results are not robust to small changes in their specification or in the...

This paper investigates the impact of habits on savings and steady state capital intensity. Within the framework of an OLG economy with productive capital, a rise in the strength of habits increases savings if the steady state is asymptotically stable. Consequently, the steady state capital...

This paper presents a model where the ability to enjoy consumption gets impaired by disabilities over time. A continuous-time Markov chain model is constructed to examine how disability risk affects consumers' discounting of future utilities. It is shown that hyperbolic discounting arises for...

The aim of this note is to investigate the relationship between economic growth and mandatory retirement in an overlapping generations model where private investment in human capital is the engine of endogenous growth. We derive a novel result in the retirement-growth literature by showing that...

This paper aims to study the behavior of the average rational consumer of an economy populated by heterogeneous agents in a finite horizon framework. Heterogeneity takes into account both the subjective discount rate and risk aversion coefficient. Closed-form solutions for the optimal paths of...

We show that quasi-hyperbolic discounting not only affects savings decisions but also the demand for insurance. In general, insurance demand by quasi-hyperbolic discounters is time-inconsistent. Without liquidity constraints they buy more insurance than initially planned. In the presence of...

Using the Bank of Italy's Survey of Households Income and Wealth (SHIW) covering a 5-year panel, we measure the impact of the degree of households' financial literacy on the quota of housing investment in their portfolio. We find that households with higher levels of financial literacy hold a...

The purpose of this paper is to present improved estimates of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) for Japan assuming a constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility function. The estimates of the IES we obtain range from 0.2 to 0.5 when we use quarterly consumption data and the...

We develop a simple analytical framework where the longevity of profit-maximizing firms requires costly resources. We show that a firm's longevity and value are positively related to the firm''s pricing power, cash reserves, honesty, and ratio of equity to debt financing.