I develop an adaptive learning model to study the welfare effects of Social Security policy uncertainty in an aging economy. Agents combine full knowledge of the political process (which Social Security reforms are possible and when they could occur) with limited knowledge about the structure of...

This paper considers an overlapping generations model of endogenous fertility, savings and intergenerational transfers. While subgame perfect equilibrium notion is more relevent to analyze individual incentives in this set-up, due to computational complexity and lack of an appropriate...

I demonstrate a straightforward but apparently widely unrecognized implication of the standard requirements for perfect competition: an economy in which consumers can choose to learn is generally not perfectly competitive. In particular, if endogenous welfare relevant learning is feasible, the...

I study voluntary disclosure of oligopoly firms when they learn information from asset prices. By disclosing information, a firm incurs a cost of losing competitive advantage to its rivals but benefits from learning from a more informative asset market. Adding a financial market helps the...

A particular ceiling on atmospheric CO2 concentrations can be maintained through a variety of emission pathways. Over the past decade, there has been considerable debate over the characteristics of a least-cost pathway. Some have suggested that a gradual departure from the emissions baseline...

I study the implications of productivity shocks in a model where agents observe the aggregate level of productivity but not its permanent and transitory components separately. The model`s predictions under learning differ substantially from those under full information and are in line with...

The paper investigates the validity of individuals' perceptions of heart disease risks, and examines how information and risk perceptions affect marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) to reduce risk, using data from a stated preference survey. Results indicate that risk perceptions individuals held...