In theory, one of the main benefits of financial globalization is that it should allow for more efficient international risk sharing. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the patterns of risk sharing among different groups of countries and examine how international...

This paper investigates whether, and to what extent, the uncertainty with respect to the annual debt service payments may adversely affect economic growth of the group of highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs). We find supportive evidence for this hypothesis. Based on these results, we conclude...

High income risk is part of life in developing countries. Climatic risks, economic fluctuations, but also a large number of individual-specific shocks make these households vulnerable to serious hardship. For example, details are given on the various shocks and events causing serious hardship to...

We use a life cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using...

Researchers frequently studied the casual relationships of other-regarding preferences by applying experimental methods in bilateral settings (e.g., dictator game and ultimatum game). We use a framed experiment on taxes to study preferences for redistribution in a multi-person setting. We find...

We compare earnings inequality and mobility across the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. during the late 1990s. A flexible model of earnings dynamics that isolates positional mobility within a stable earnings distribution is estimated. Earnings trajectories are then simulated, and...

We document that home ownership of households with 'heads' aged 25-44 years fell substantially between 1980 and 2000 and recovered only partially during the 2001-2005 housing boom. The 1980-2000 decline in young home ownership occurred as improvements in mortgage opportunities seemingly made it...

Securitization does not explain the reluctance among lenders to renegotiate home mortgages. We focus on seriously delinquent borrowers from 2005 through the third quarter of 2008 and show that servicers renegotiate similarly small fractions of securitized and portfolio loans. The results are...

We estimate a Markov-switching mixture of two familiar macroeconomic models: a richly parameterized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model and a corresponding Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) model. We show that the Markov-switching mixture model dominates both individual...