How important is financial development for economic development? A costly state veriÂ…cation model of financial intermediation is presented to address this question. The model is calibrated to match facts about the U.S. economy, such as the intermediation spreads and the firm-size...

A very brief historical discussion of marriage, divorce, and out-of-wedlock births in England and France.

A discussion of the importance for economics of Kydland and Prescott's (1982) classic "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations". A report submitted to The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in support of the The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for Finn E....

A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: -Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. -The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period....

Many would say that children are society's most precious resource. So, how should we invest in them? To gain insight into this question, a dynamic general equilibrium model is developed where children differ by ability. Parents invest time and money in their offspring, depending on their...

In 1900 only six percent of unwed females engaged in premarital sex. Now, three quarters do. The sexual revolution is studied here using an equilibrium matching model, where the costs of premarital sex fall over time due to technological improvement in contraceptives. Individuals differ in their...

A search-theoretic model of equilibrium unemployment is constructed and shown to be consistent with the key regularities of the labor market and business cycle. The two distinguishing features of the model are: (i) the decision to accept or reject jobs is modeled explicitly, and (ii) markets are...

According to Pareto (1896), the distribution of income depends on ``the nature of the people comprising a society, on the organization of the latter, and, also, in part, on chance.'' In the model developed here the ``nature of the people'' is captured by attitudes toward marriage, divorce,...

Between 1800 and 1940 the U.S. went through a dramatic demographic transition. In 1800 the average woman had 7 children, and 94 percent of the population lived in rural areas. By 1940 the average woman birthed just 2 kids, and only 43 percent of populace lived in the country. The question is:...