This study investigates the productivity differences and its sources across a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of the Spanish banking system (1900-1914). These years were characterised by major qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry including a sharp...

This paper studies the aggregate welfare consequences of changes in the prescribed penalty for personal bankruptcy and in social insurance policies when borrowing limits may respond to these changes. It uses a dynamic general equilibrium model of an exchange economy with incomplete markets and a...

A generalized rise in unemployment rates for both college and high-school graduates, a widening education wage premium, and a sharp increase in college education participation are characteristic features of the transformations observed in the U.S. labor market between 1970 and 1990. This paper...

This paper studies economies with complete markets where there is positive default on consumer debt. In a simple tractable two-period model, households can default partially, at a finite punishment cost, and competitive intermediaries price loans of different sizes separately. This environment...

This article studies simultaneous changes in four labor market variables: the unemployment rates for college and high-school graduates, the education wage premium, and the level of college participation. It develops an equilibrium search and matching model of the labor market where education is...

A skill-biased change in technology can account at once for the changes observed in a number of important variables of the US labour market between 1970 and 1990. These include the increasing inequality in wages, both between and within education groups, and the increase in unemployment at all...

Credit cards offer a limit, rather than a specific loan size, at a pre-approved interest rate. This paper studies the determination of these credit limits jointly with default in the presence of one-period debt. I adapt the standard incomplete markets macroeconomic model of one-period unsecured...