The first essay of this dissertation is a joint work with Fabrizio Perri in which we address one of the major shortcomings of real business cycle models: their lack of an internal propagation mechanism of the shocks. We thus develop an open economy two-sector model and show that is able to...

"One of the most dramatic economic transformations of the past century has been the entry of women into the labor force. While many theories explain why this change took place, we investigate the process of transition itself. We argue that local information transmission generates changes in...