The global financial crisis which erupted in the United States instantaneously swept across Europe. Like the United States, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was ripe for a crash. It had its own real estate bubble, specifically in Ireland and Spain, indulged in excessive deficit spending,...

In the presence of asymmetric information, the stage at which financing decisions are made about investment projects in a small open economy is crucial for the composition of international capital inflows as well as for the efficiency of channeling savings into investment. This paper compares...

In Razin, Sadka and Yuen (1998, 1999a), we explored the policy implications of the home-bias in international portfolio investment as a result of asymmetric information problems in which domestic savers, being 'close' to the domestic market, have an informational advantage over foreign portfolio...

This paper estimates a dynamic model of schooling attainment to investigate the sources of discrepancy by race and ethnicity in college attendance. When the returns to college education rose, college enrollment of whites responded much more quickly than that of minorities. Parental income is a...

This paper considers the problem of policy evaluation in a modern society with heterogeneous agents and diverse groups with conflicting interests. Several different approaches to the policy evaluation problem are compared including the approach adopted in modern welfare economics, the classical...

This paper develops, calibrates, and simulates a dynamic 88-period OLG model to study the intergenerational transmission of U.S. wealth inequality via bequests. The model features marriage, realistic fertility patterns, random death, assortative mating based on skills, heterogeneous skill...

In a static setup, migration of unskilled labor may be resisted by the entire native-born population because, being relatively low earners, migrants are net beneficiaries of the fiscal system. However, the paper shows that with a pay-as-you-go pension, an important pillar of the welfare state,...

This paper presents a new solution to the time-consistency problem that appears capable of enforcing ex ante policy in a variety of settings in which other enforcement mechanisms do not work. The solution involves formulating a law, institution, or agreement that specifies the optimal ex ante...

This paper questions the widely accepted view that deficits have real effects in the life cycle model. Standard analyses of deficits within life cycle models treat the government as a dictatorial entity that can effect any intergenerational redistribution it desires. In contrast, this paper...

The precautionary motive for saving is an important issue that is receiving increasing attention. Part of the motivation for this interest stems from the post war coincidence of two trends, one a decline in the U.S. rate of saving and the other an increase in insurance of various types,...