This paper presents a framework for understanding the limits that exist in optimal policy design in dynamic contexts. We consider the design of policies in the context of dynamic linear models. Fundamental design limits exist for policy rules in such environments in the sense that any policy...

A decision maker constructs a convex set of nonnegative martingales to use as likelihood ratios that represent parametric alternatives to a baseline model and also non-parametric models statistically close to both the baseline model and the parametric alternatives. Max-min expected utility over...

This paper proposes a tractable way to model boundedly rational dynamic programming. The agent uses an endogenously simplified, or "sparse," model of the world and the consequences of his actions and acts according to a behavioral Bellman equation. The framework yields a behavioral version of...

Using optimal control theory and a vector autoregressive representation of the relationship between money and interest rates, one can derive a feedback control procedure which defines the best possible tradeoff between interest rate volatility and money supply fluctuations and which could be...

We extend the control function approach of Altonji and Mansfield (2018) to allow for multiple group levels and complementarities. Our analysis provides a foundation for causal interpretation of multilevel mixed effects models in the presence of sorting. In our empirical application, we obtain...

We develop a quantitative framework for exploring how individuals trade off the utility benefit of social activity against the internal and external health risks that come with social interactions during a pandemic. We calibrate the model to external targets and then compare its predictions with...

Structural econometric methods are often criticized for being sensitive to functional form assumptions. We study parametric estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE) derived from a widely used class of latent threshold crossing models and show they yield LATE estimates...

We consider a general class of nonlinear optimal policy problems involving forward-looking constraints (such as the Euler equations that are typically present as structural equations in DSGE models), and show that it is possible, under regularity conditions that are straightforward to check, to...

The optimal policy response to a low-probability extreme event is examined. A simple policy problem is solved for a sequence of different loss functions: quadratic, combined quadratic/absolute-deviation, absolute-deviation, combined quadratic/constant, and perfectionist. The paper shows that,...

The literature on the optimal harvest of fisheries has concentrated on a single fishing area with biomass uncertainty and to a lesser degree also with price uncertainty. We develop and implement a stochastic optimal control approach to determine the harvest that maximizes the value of a fishery...