In the mid 80.s, many European countries liberalized the use of fixed-term contracts in order to lower firm.s non-wage labor costs, instead of reducing firing costs associated with indefinite duration contracts. This policy generated segmented labor markets, being the Spanish case the most...

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el impacto que la entrada de inmigrantes tendrá sobre las cuentas de las Administraciones Públicas andaluzas y sobre la sostenibilidad a largo plazo de las actuales políticas de gasto público en Andalucía. Para ello, realizamos diferentes simulaciones...

We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data?...

We build a variation of the neoclassical growth model in which both wealth shocks (in the sense of wealth destruction) and financial shocks to households generate recessions. The model features three mild departures from the standard model: (1) adjustment costs make it difficult to expand the...

In this paper we study how a benevolent government that cannot commit to future policy should trade off the costs and benefits of public expenditure. We characterize and solve for Markov-perfect equilibria of the dynamic game between successive governments. The characterization consists of an...

In this paper we study the role of habit formation in shaping the wealth distribution in an otherwise standard heterogeneous agents model economy with idiosyncratic uncertainty. We compare the inplications for precautionary savings and for wealth concentration between economies that only differ...

This article describes the current state of economic theory intended to explain the unequal distribution of wealth among U.S. households. The models reviewed are heterogeneous agent versions of standard neoclassical growth models with uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks to earnings. The models...

This article describes some facts about financial inequality in the United States that a good theory of inequality must be able to explain. These include the facts that labor earnings, income, and wealth are all unequally distributed among U.S. households, but the distributions are significantly...

Necessary conditions for equilibrium are that beliefs about the behavior of other agents are rational and individuals maximize. We argue that in stationary OLG environments this implies that any future generation in the same situation as the initial generation must do as well as the initial...

Global financial imbalances can result from financial integration when countries differ in financial markets development. Countries with more advanced financial markets accumulate foreign liabilities in a gradual, long-lasting process. Differences in financial development also affect the...