In Chapter 1, I study the efficiency properties of competitive search equilibria in economies with informational asymmetries. Employers and workers are both risk-neutral and ex-ante homogeneous. I characterize an equilibrium where employers post contracts and workers direct their search towards...

Chapter 1 analyzes Pareto optimal non-linear taxation of profits and labor income in a private information economy with endogenous firm formation. Individuals differ in both their skill and their cost of setting up a firm, and choose between becoming workers and entrepreneurs. I show that a tax...

This thesis is a collection of two essays on open economy macroeconomics. The first essay is on imperfect asset substitutability and current account dynamics. It is divided into four chapters. The first chapter in this essay is a preface for the chapters to follow. The second chapter lays out a...

The first essay explores the relationship between openness and growth. As, Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) argue, the relation between openness and growth is still an open question. One of the main problems in the assessment of the effect is the endogeneity of the relation. In order to address this...

Economies around the world are marked by major interventions in credit markets. Institutions ranging from central banks to the Grameen Bank operate under the assumptions that credit markets are imperfect, that these imperfections can be ameliorated, and that doing so increases output. There is...

This thesis consists of three separate papers. In the first paper, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which has measures of both risk preferences and religiosity along with measures of many risky behaviors, I investigate the implications of the correlations among risk preferences,...