While the literature on consumption insurance is growing fast, little research has been conducted on how rural consumption insurance is affected by democracy. In this paper the authors examine how consumption insurance of Chinese rural residents is affected if the local leader is democratically...

This paper provides a search model for housing market where the number of buyers and/or sellers plays very important role. The model makes three testable predictions: (1) the unemployment rate has a negative impact on the trading volume and the sale prices of the housing market; (2) a larger...

In this paper, we study an important paradox of Deaton and Paxson (1998): Using the Barten model of economies of scale, Deaton and Paxson predict food share should increase as household size rises at the same per capita expenditure, while their empirical evidence shows the opposite. This paradox...

This paper investigates whether subjective expectations about future mortality affect consumption and bequests motives. We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model based on subjective survival rates and wealth from the panel dataset Asset and Health Dynamics among Oldest Old. We find that bequest...

This paper investigates to what extent and through which channels that health and educational attainment are interdependent. A dynamic model of schooling, work, health expenditure, and savings is developed. The structural framework explicitly models two existing hypotheses on the correlation...

This paper investigates to what extent the differences in education between black and white men can be explained by the differences in their mortality risks. A dynamic optimal stopping-point life cycle model is examined, in which group-level mortality risk plays an important role in determining...

In a contest, participants spend money or effort to increase their chances of winning a prize. The authors examine primarily the following question: Could the timid (the more risk averse) have a better chance of winning in contests? Under limited liability the answer is always positive. In the...