To design an optimal education policy, it is essential to account for the fertility differential between the poor and the rich because it affects the human capital investment through the child quantity-quality tradeoff of children. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium in which parents choose...

We calibrate an incomplete markets large scale OLG model to the US income and wealth distribution and examine the effects of alternative government debt levels and adjustment policies on macroeconomic aggregates and welfare. We find that the government should hold negative debt. Due to the high...

We present new empirical evidence on the distribution of earnings, income and wealth among entrepreneurs in Germany. We document that both earnings and income are more concentrated among entrepreneurs than among workers and describe a large-scale overlapping-generations model that can replicate...

We examine economic growth, inequality and education when the wellspring of growth is the formation of human capital through a combination of the quality of child-rearing and formal schooling. The existence of multiple steady states is established, including a poverty trap, wherein children work...

The paper examines the effect of heterogeneity in individual human capital formation on cross-country income inequality. It considers a two-country model of overlapping generation heterogeneous economies with the following features: (1) individuals are heterogeneous with respect to inborn...

The life-cycle patterns of consumption, wage and hours inequality observed in U.S. cross-section data are commonly viewed as incompatible with a Pareto efficient allocation. We determine the extent to which these qualitative and quantitative patterns can or cannot be produced by Pareto efficient...

How much of income inequality is due to initial opportunities relative to adult income risk? What factors determine intergenerational mobility? We study these questions with particular interest in the impact of two family choices: fertility and transfers. Fertility rates, which are higher for...

Poor families have more children and transfer less resources to them. This suggests that family decisions about fertility and transfers dampen intergenerational mobility. To evaluate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, we extend the standard heterogeneous agent life cycle model with...

The paper examines the effect of heterogeneity in individual human capital formation on cross-country income inequality. It considers a two-country model of overlapping generation heterogeneous economies with the following features: (1) individuals are heterogeneous with respect to inborn...

We take into account that envy (relative consumption concerns) is more pronounced in the present than in the future. We consider a Ramsey-type model in which agents differ only in their initial capital endowments but are identical in their exogenous parameters. Agents' preferences exhibit...