This paper analyses the effect of local crime rates on the mental well-being of residents. Our identification strategy addresses the problem of sorting, and endogenous moving behaviour. We find that crime causes considerable mental distress of residents, and that these effects are mainly driven...

This paper analyzes the effect of educational mismatch on wages, using a rich panel dataset of workers in the major euro area countries from 2006 to 2009, drawn from the <i>European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions</i> (Eurostat). We use a consistent estimator to address the two...

This paper dwells on the Eurozone woes and addresses the origins of the transition from a fictitious boom to a painful bust by unravelling (i) the supply-side structural imbalances that formed the core-periphery economic divide, and (ii) the necessity of the periphery’s sovereign debt to...

In this paper we examine the dynamic contributions of capital accumulation, globalisation, and financialisation to the functional-personal income distribution nexus. We analyse the labour share under the prism of monopoly and frictional growth, and disclose the dramatic upward trend in...

This paper estimates the impact on the US economy of four types of uncertainty about <i>(i)</i> government spending, <i>(ii)</i> tax changes, <i>(iii)</i> public debt sustainability and <i>(iv)</i> monetary policy. Following a one standard deviation shock, uncertainty about debt sustainability has the largest and most...

We develop a model in which competition in the labor market may produce worker-firm matches that are inferior to those obtained in the absence of competition. This result contrasts with the conventional wisdom that competition among employers allocates scarce talent efficiently. In a model in...

Disability rolls have escalated in developed nations over the last 40 years. The UK, however, stands out because the numbers on these benefits stopped rising when a welfare reform was introduced that integrated disability benefits with unemployment insurance (UI). This policy reform improved job...

We propose a new predictor of real economic activity (REA), namely the representative investor's implied relative risk aversion (IRRA) extracted from S&P 500 option prices. IRRA exploits the forward-looking information in option prices. It increases as risk averse investors enter the market,...

This paper develops a model that combines intra-household bargaining with competition on the marriage market to analyse women's and men's incentives to invest in education. Once married, spouses bargain over their share of total household income. They have the option of unilateral divorce and...

Real-time estimates of output gaps and inflation trends differ from the values that are obtained using data available long after the event. Part of the problem is that the data on which the real-time estimates are based is subsequently revised. We show that vector-autoregressive models of data...