Marriage has declined since 1960, with the drop being bigger for non-college educated individuals versus college educated ones. Divorce has increased, more so for the non-college educated vis-à-vis the college educated. Additionally, assortative mating has risen; i.e., people are more likely to...

We quantitatively investigate the capacity to collect revenue when the government is constrained to use non-linear (progressive) income taxes. We develop a life-cycle growth model with individual heterogeneity and endogenous labor supply, and explore the degree of tax progressivity that can be...

We analyze the role of optimal income taxation across different locations. Existing federal income tax schedules have a distortionary effect and result in the misallocation of labor across cities of different size. Because of higher productivity in big cities, wages for identically skilled...

Societies socialize children about sex. This is done in the presence of peer-group effects, which may encourage undesirable behavior. Parents want the best for their children. Still, they weigh the marginal gains from socializing their children against its costs. Churches and states may...

We develop a model economy in the spirit of Caucutt, Guner and Knowles (2002). Each period single men and women with various levels of productivity are matched in a marriage market segmented by age and race. They decide whether or not to marry taking into account what their next best option is....

as in Melitz (2003). This increases …firms´ incentives to hire or …re workers as idiosyncratic productivity shocks occur, thereby increasing job turnover and, because of the search frictions, spreading the wage distribution. Preliminary simulations at plausible parameter values suggest that...

We build an equilibrium life-cycle model populated by heterogeneous single and married agents. Married households decide if both or only one members should work. Labor supply decisions of women capture central elements of reality; if a married female with children works, the household incurs...

Labor market decisions are not taken in isolation when individuals are engaged in stable relationships. Our analysis is designed to determine the joint equilibrium distribution of schooling levels, labor market outcomes, and marriage market statuses. We assume individuals begin adult life by...

The levels of wealth differ significantly among people who are approaching their retirement both by current marital status as well as by marital histories. We develop an equilibrium model of marriage and divorce and household savings, in which the interplay between endogenous formation and...

During the period from 1880 to 1950 publicly managed retirement security programs became an important part of the social fabric in most advanced economies. In this paper we study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. We describe a model economy in which demographics,...