A model with leisure production and endogenous retirement is used to explain the declining labor-force participation rates of elderly males. Using the Health and Retirement Study, the model is calibrated to cross-sectional data on the labor-force participation rates of elderly US males by age...

During the period 1910 to 1970, an increasing fraction of the urban population in the US chose to live on the outskirts of central cities. This was also a time when a major innovation in transportation technology, the automobile, was introduced and widely adopted. The objective of this paper is...

What caused the baby boom? And, can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years? The hypothesis is that: 1. The secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of...

The U.S. went through a remarkable structural transformation between 1800 and 2000. In 1800 the majority of people worked in agriculture. Barely anyone did by 2000. What caused the rapid demise of agriculture in the economy? The analysis here concentrates on the development of new consumer goods...

Growth theory goes a long way toward explaining phenomena in labor economics linked with U.S. economic development. Some examples are: (a) the secular decline in fertility between 1800 and 1980, (b) the decline in agricultural employment and the rise in skill since 1800, (c) the demise of child...

To address how technological progress in financial intermediation affects the economy, a costly-state verification framework is embedded into the standard growth model. The framework has two novel ingredients. First, firms differ in the risk/return combinations that they offer. Second, the...

In 1900 only six percent of unwed females engaged in premarital sex. Now, three quarters do. The sexual revolution is studied here using an equilibrium matching model, where the costs of premarital sex fall over time due to technological improvement in contraceptives. Individuals differ in their...

Abstract: In each of the following chapters, macro models are developed to explore the impact of technological progress on the household. Chapter 1 focuses on the impact of technological progress in transportation on suburbanization. In this chapter, a model of a city is developed in which...

Labor market performance varies greatly across countries while, within countries, individuals have very different labor market experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to document these features and propose a modelling framework that can help us understand the observations. In Chapter...

General equilibrium models are used to explore the interactions between macroeconomics and the two components of population growth: natural increase and net-migration. The first questions at hand are: What caused the baby boom? Can it be explained within the context of the decline in fertility...