We document large differences between the United States and France in allocations of consumption expenditures and time by age. Using a life-cycle model, we quantify to what extent tax and transfer programs and market and home productivity can account for the differences. We find that while labor...

We study the effects of uncertainty on time use and their macroeconomic implications. Employing data from the American Time Use Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we document that heightened uncertainty increases housework and reduces market work hours, mildly impacting leisure. We then...

We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present. Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group...

We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present. Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group...

This paper investigates whether one's effort to keep up with the Joneses has any effect on labor supply behavior. We provide a simple model and empirical evidence that labor supply decisions of married women are influenced by relative as well as absolute income of their husbands. We find, after...

We introduce intergenerational transfers into a general equilihrium life-cycle model in order to explain observed levels of wealth heterogeneity. In our overlapping generations model, heterogenous agents face uncertain lifetime and leave both accidental and voluntary bequests to their cinldren....

This paper analyzes the welfare costs of business cycles when workers face uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. In accordance with the previous literature, this paper decomposes labor income risk into an aggregate and an idiosyncratic component, but in contrast to the previous...

We analyze the macroeconomic implications of increasing the top marginal income tax rate using a dynamic general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous agents and a fiscal structure resembling the actual U.S. tax system. The wealth and income distributions generated by our model replicate the...

We analyze the macroeconomic implications of increasing the top marginal income tax rate using a dynamic general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous agents and a fiscal structure resembling the actual US tax system. The wealth and income distributions generated by our model replicate the...

This paper uses a heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher...