Urbanization economies - the effects on productivity and utility created endogenously by larger cities - are a fundamental component of both the economic geography of modern societies and the perpetuation of innovation and economic growth at a national level. Cities account for vast majorities...

There is a general presumption that social preferences can be ignored if markets are competitive. Market experiments (Smith 1962) and recent theoretical results (Dufwenberg et al. 2008) suggest that competition forces people to behave as if they were purely self-interested. We qualify this view....

There is a general presumption that social preferences can be ignored if markets are competitive. Market experiments (Smith 1962) and recent theoretical results (Dufwenberg et al. 2008) suggest that competition forces people to behave as if they were purely self-interested. We qualify this view....

The main contribution of this paper is to place smooth infinite economies in the setting of the equilibrium manifold and the natural projection map à la Balasko. We show that smooth infinite economies have an equilibrium set that has the structure of a Banach manifold and that the natural...

The paper argues that, from a dynamic efficiency perspective, intersections of factor price frontiers are irrelevant to the choice of techniques. Because every change in technique involves a temporary loss or gain in both profit and per capita consumption within the transition period, its...

A flat tax rate on income has gained popularity in European countries. This paper assesses the attractiveness of such a flat tax in achieving redistributive objectives with the least cost to labour market performance. We do so by using a detailed applied general equilibrium model for the...

We develop a general equilibrium model of banks' capital structure, featuring heterogeneous portfolio risk and an imperfectly elastic supply of bank equity stemming from financial market segmentation. In our model, equity is costly and serves as a buffer against insolvency. Banks are ex-ante...

The effect of incomplete information on the term structure of interest rates is examined in the framework of a pure exchange economy under uncertainty. When the growth rate of the aggregate endowment is known, the term structure is flat and deterministic. When agents do not observe the...

The authors show how the influence of extrinsic random signals depends on the noise structure of these signals. They present an experiment on a coordination game in which extrinsic random signals may generate sunspot equilibria. They measure how these signals affect behavior. Sunspot equilibria...

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...