We present an empirical dynamic discrete choice model of life insurance decisions designed to bypass data limitations where researchers only observe whether an individual has made a new life insurance decision but but do not observe the actual policy choice or the choice set from which the...

Previous research has shown that the reasons for lapsation have important implications regarding the effects of the emerging life settlement market on consumer welfare. We present and empirically implement a dynamic discrete choice model of life insurance decisions to assess the importance of...

Previous research has shown that the reasons for lapsation have important implications regarding the effects of the emerging life settlement market on consumer welfare. We present and empirically implement a dynamic discrete choice model of life insurance decisions to assess the importance of...

We study the effect of the life settlement market on the structure of long term contracts offered by the primary market for life insurance, as well as the effect on consumer welfare, using a dynamic model of life insurance with one sided commitment and bequest-driven lapsation. We show that the...

We study the effect of the life settlement market on the structure of long term contracts offered by the primary market for life insurance, as well as the effect on consumer welfare, using a dynamic model of life insurance with one sided commitment and bequest-driven lapsation. We show that the...

Using new data on real estate listings, we provide new evidence that foreclosures have a causal effect on nearby house prices and disentangle the effect into two sources: competition and disamenities. We identify the causal effect by showing that sellers respond to new REO listings in the exact...

Using a novel dataset which merges real estate listings with real estate transactions in San Francisco from 2007-2009, we present new evidence that foreclosures causally depress nearby home prices. We show that this decrease occurs only after the foreclosed home is listed for sale, which...

We advance a novel choice-theoretic model of “identity” based on the notions of categories and narratives. Identity is conceived as a matter of “reflexive perception” — how people understand themselves. Choosing an identity is equivalent to making a generalization about one’s past...

This article proposes and empirically implements a structural model of education choices and wage determination to quantitatively evaluate the contributions of productivity enhancement and ability signaling in the college wage premium. The model is estimated under various distributional...