We provide theory for calculating bounds on both the value of an individual’s human capital and the return on an individual’s human capital, given knowledge of the process governing earnings and financial asset returns. We calculate bounds using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset...

This paper uses an estimated structural model to argue that the option to move in and out of the parental home is an important insurance channel against labor market risk for youths who do not attend college. Using data from the NLSY97, I construct a new monthly panel of parent-youth coresidence...

We show that much of the recent reported decrease in interstate migration is a statistical artifact. Before 2006, the Census Bureau’s imputation procedure for dealing with missing data in the Current Population Survey inflated the estimated interstate migration rate. An undocumented change in...

Market booms are often followed by dramatic falls. To explain this requires an asymmetry in the underlying shocks. A straightforward model of technological progress generates asymmetries that are also the source of growth cycles. Assuming a representative consumer, we show that the stock market...

This paper studies the quantitative properties of fiscal and monetary policy in business cycle models. In terms of fiscal policy, optimal labor tax rates are virtually constant and optimal capital income tax rates are close to zero on average. In terms of monetary policy, the Friedman rule is...

This paper is motivated by empirical observations on the comovements of currency velocity, inflation, and the relative size of the credit services sector. We document these comovements and incorporate into a monetary growth model a credit services sector that provides services that help people...

A tax distorted real business cycle model is parameterized, calibrated, and solved numerically in an attempt to measure the size of Harberger Triangles relative to Okun Gaps. In particular, the model constructed is used to study, quantitatively, the impact of various distortional government tax...

The optimal choice of a monetary policy instrument depends on how tight and transparent the available instruments are and on whether policymakers can commit to future policies. Tightness is always desirable; transparency is only if policymakers cannot commit. Interest rates, which can be made...

A distinction is drawn between outside money - money that is either of a fiat nature or backed by some asset that is not in zero net supply within the private sector - and inside money, which is an asset backed by any form of private credit that circulates as a medium of exchange.