Section I of this paper develops a model of income insurance in the labor market. The model differs from those of previous analyses in its focus on quantitative implications regarding the degree to which wages diverge from marginal value products, both in time-series and in cross-section data....

In the first essay, titled "Is Economic Transition a Health Hazard? Estimating the Short-term Effect of Income on Self-assessed Health in Russia: 1994--2000," I use data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to estimate the causal impact of income on self-assessed health status of...