June 1997 <p> Over the last forty years, the majority of states have adopted consumer education policies, and a sizable minority have specifically mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision-making (budgeting, credit management, saving...</p>

December 1995 <p>We explore signaling behavior in settings with a discriminating signal and several costly nondiscriminating ("money burning") activities. In settings where informed parties have many options for burning money, existing theory provides no basis for selecting one nondiscriminating...</p>

March 1999 <p> In this survey, I summarize and evaluate the extant literature concerning taxation and personal saving. I describe the theoretical models that economists have used to depict saving decisions, and I explore the positive and normative implications of these models. The central positive...</p>

September 1997 <p> Household survey data consistently depict large variations in saving and wealth, even among households with similar socio-economic characteristics. Within the context of the life cycle hypothesis, families with identical lifetime resources might choose to accumulate different...</p>

February 1996 (Last Version: December 1992) <p>In this paper, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding the phenomenon of exclusive dealing, and we explore the motivations for and effects of its use. For a broad class of models, we characterize the outcome of a contracting game in which...</p>

March 1996 <p>This paper undertakes a review of the existing academic work on tax incentives and personal saving. Its central conclusions are as follows. First, the traditional life cycle hypothesis has had an excessive influence on the design and conceptualization of empirical investigations...</p>

March 1996 <p>In recent years, the United States has witnessed significant growth in programs of financial and retirement education in the workplace. This phenomenon provides an opportunity to assess the effects of targeted education programs on financial choices. This paper uses a novel household...</p>

June 1996 <p>We examine the effects of education on financial decision-making skills by identifying an interesting source of variation in pertinent training. During the 1990s, an increasing number of individuals were exposed to programs of financial education provided by their employers. If, as...</p>