We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the policy is infinite-dimensional, we prove that a median voter theorem holds if households have...

Recent literature on structural vector autoregressions has attempted to identify the effects on the economy of an increase in the stock of money. This work has led to a broad concensus. Initially, an increase in money leads to an increase in economic activity. Output and employment go up, the...

We examine the role of generalized constant gain stochastic gradient (SGCG) learning in generating large deviations of an endogenous variable from its rational expectations value. We show analytically that these large deviations can occur with a frequency associated with a fat tailed...

This paper studies lifetime aggregate labor supply with endogenous workweek length. Such a theory is needed to evaluate various government policies. A key feature of our model is a nonlinear mapping from hours worked to labor services. This gives rise to an endogenous workweek that can differ...

Agriculture's share of economic activity is known to vary inversely with a country's level of development. This paper examines whether extensions of the neoclassical growth model can account for some important sectoral patterns observed in a current cross-section of countries and in the time...

We formulate a version of the growth model in which production is carried out by heterogeneous establishments and calibrate it to U.S. data. In the context of this model we argue that differences in the allocation of resources across establishments that differ in productivity may be an important...

This paper documents the large differences in hours of work across OECD countries and shows how these differences have evolved over time. It argues that changes in technology and government can potentially account for the broad patterns of change. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper extends the Lucas-Prescott island economy to allow for finite lived agents and sector specific human capital. Unlike the Lucas-Prescott model in which workers who leave declining sectors find employment in expanding sectors, this models predicts that workers who leave declining...

A large portion of differences in output per capita across countries is explained by differences in total factor productivity (TFP). In this article, we summarize a recent literature — and the articles in this special issue on misallocation and productivity — that focus on the...

What are the conditions under which Gresham's Law holds? And what are the mechanics of a debasement? To analyze these questions, we develop a model of commodity money with light and heavy coins, imperfect information, and prices determined via bilateral bargaining. There are equilibria with...