We propose an overlapping generations economy where households care about relative consumption, the difference between their consumption and the consumption of their reference group. An individual's consumption is driven by the comparison of his lifetime income and the lifetime income of his...

We analyse life-cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimization problem. We simulate life-cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the...

This paper extends the standard model of life cycle consumption, saving and labor supply in a number of directions. First, it argues that consumption should be defined as expenditure on household production as well as on market goods, that is, we are interested in life cycle profiles of full...

We present a model that explains how a cluster moves through a life cycle and why this movement differs from the industry life cycle. The model is based on three key processes: the changing heterogeneity in the cluster describes the movement of the cluster through the life cycle; the geographical...

This paper examines how Frisch labor supplies, and other structural components of the intertemporal model of labor supply, can be recovered from estimates obtained with the approach developed by Heckman and MaCurdy.

This paper develops a life-cycle approach to equilibrium unemployment. Workers only differ respectively to their distance from deterministic retirement. A non age-directed search equilibrium is then typically featured by increasing (decreasing) firing (hiring) rates with age and a hump-shaped...

Much of the macroeconomics literature dealing with wealth distribution has become abstracted from modeling housing explicitly. This paper investigates the properties of the wealth distribution and the portfolio composition regarding housing and equity holdings and their relationship to...