The paper is based on an individual life-cycle model, which describes the purely economic components of human capital. The present value of human capital is determined by all future income flows, which at the same time constitute the individual as well as the total tax base of a nation....

We study the quantitative properties of constrained efficient allocations in an environment where risk sharing is limited by the presence of private information. We consider a life cycle version of a standard Mirrlees economy where shocks to labor productivity have a component that is public...

This paper explores the extent of consumption smoothing between 1981 and 1985 in rural Burkina Faso. In particular, we examine the extent to which livestock, grain storage and interhousehold transfers are used to smooth consumption against income risk. The survey coincided with a period of...

Resource transfers among households have received considerable interest among economists in recent years. Two of the main reasons for the surge of interest in household transfers are the information on human nature conveyed by transfer behavior and the implication on income redistribution policy...

Recent changes in the U.S. liability regime for oil pollution damage are precipitating a potential insurance crisis for oil carriers operating in U.S. waters. While liability rules can be useful in causing the oil transport industry to internalize the costs of oil pollution, unlimited liability...

Replacement of the traditional interest based credit system with an Islamic credit systemwas one of the fundamental changes in Iran since 1979. The Islamic credit system, offersthe prospect of risk sharing between the borrower and the lender. Small farmers are likelyto be risk averse and they...

This dissertation concerns cross-country consumption risk sharing in a long-run perspective. Financial integration, empirically measured by cross-country holdings of assets and liabilities, has increased dramatically in the past two decades. But what can explain the lack of cross-country risk...