Most of the discussion about fiscal stimulus focuses on the multiplier of government spending on impact. In this paper we shift the focus to the multiplier at the end, i.e. to the period in which a deficit spending program terminates. We show that recent time series analyses as well as economic...

Recent empirical research has shown that income per capita in the aftermath of natural disasters is not necessarily lower than before the event. In many cases, income is not significantly affected and surprisingly, can even respond positively to natural disasters. Here, we propose a simple...

Aging humans adapt to their worsening state of health and old people are usually happier than estimated by young individuals. In this paper we investigate how adaptation to a deteriorating state of health affects health spending, life expectancy, and the value of life. We set up a a life cycle...

The anticipation of bad future events reduces currently experienced happiness and it may through this channel elicit detrimental behavioral responses. We explore this idea in the context of endogenous health and aging. We integrate physiological aging into a life-cycle model, calibrate it with...

It has been argued that hyperbolic discounting of future gains and losses leads to time-inconsistent behavior and thereby, in the context of health economics, not enough investment in health and too much indulgence of unhealthy consumption. Here, we challenge this view. We set up a life-cycle...

Married people live longer than singles but how much of the longevity gap is causal and what the particular mechanisms are is not fully understood. In this paper we propose a new approach, based on counterfactual computational experiments, in order to asses how much of the marriage gap can be...

We analyze the effects of automation and education on economic growth and inequality in an R&D-based growth model with two types of labor: high-skilled labor that is complementary to machines and low-skilled labor that is a substitute for machines. The model predicts that innovation-driven...

We set up a unified growth model with gender-specific differences in tastes for consumption, fertility, education of daughters and sons, and consider the intra-household bargaining power of spouses. In line with the empirical regularity for less developed countries, we assume that mothers desire...

Conventional R&D-based growth theory argues that productivity growth is driven by population growth but the data suggest that the erstwhile positive correlation between population and productivity turned negative during the 20th century. In order to resolve this problem we integrate R&D-based...

This paper proposes a theory for the gradual evolution of knowledge diffusion and growth over the very long run. A feedback mechanism between capital accumulation and the ease of knowledge diffusion explains a long epoch of (quasi-) stasis and an epoch of high growth linked by a gradual economic...