We review studies of the impact of credit constraints on the accumulation of human capital. Evidence suggests that credit constraints have recently become important for schooling and other aspects of households' behavior. We highlight the importance of early childhood investments, since their...

This paper starts out with a brief discussion of the historical background, the justifications and the political forces behind the built up of the modern welfare state. It also summarizes its major achievements in terms of economic efficiency and redistribution. The paper also tries to identify...

Macroeconomic Dynamics commissioned this interview with Assar Lindbeck for a series of such conversations with economists, starting with Duncan Foley's interview with Wassily Leontief in 1998. Other interviews in the series include Ben McCallum's interview with Robert Lucas (1999), Olivier...

This paper starts out with a brief discussion of the historical background, the justifications and the political forces behind the built up of the modern welfare state. It also summarizes its major achievements in terms of economic efficiency and redistribution. The paper also tries to identify...

The paper develops a technique for studying incentive problems with unidimensional hidden characteristics in a way that is independent of whether the type set is nite, the type distribution has a continuous density, or the type distribution has both mass points and an atomless part. By this...

This paper studies the aggregate implications of microeconomic investment irreversibility and idiosyncratic uncertainty in a simple growth model by highlighting real option effects. We endogenize the drift rate of real option by connecting it to the state of the economy. Thereby, we extend the...