I study a principal-agent problem in which the principal can obtain additional costly information about the agent's effort. I analyze this problem in the context of optimal unemployment insurance a la Hopenhayn and Nicolini (1997), where job-search effort is private information. I calibrate the...

We develop an heterogeneous agent model of consumption and health choices in order to estimate the effect of heath status in the marginal utility of consumption. We use micro data from the HRS, PSID, and CEX to identify the parameters of interest from the observed consumption growth for...

When trade is costly within countries, international trade leads to concentration of economic activity in locations with good access to foreign markets. Costly trade within countries also makes it hard for remote locations to gain from international trade. We investigate the role of these forces...

This paper adds imitation by incumbent firms, and not just by new entrants, to the model of selection and growth developed in Luttmer [2007]. Noisy firm-level innovation and imitation give rise to a long-run growth rate that exceeds the average rate at which individual firms innovate. It can be...

We develop a model of technological progress and knowledge transmission in the Malthusian era. Given low literacy rates, codified knowledge and formal education were much less important than today. Instead, most knowledge was directly acquired from elders. In knowledge-intensive areas, this...

This study proposes that heterogeneous household portfolio choices within a country and across countries offer an explanation for global imbalances. We construct a stochastic growth multi-country model in which heterogeneous agents face the following restrictions on asset trade. First, the...

We present a macroeconomic model with a financial intermediary sector subject to an equity capital constraint. The novel aspect of our analysis is that the model produces a stochastic steady state distribution for the economy, in which only some of the states correspond to systemic risk states....

with theories of biased technological adoption but hard to rationalize in a neoclassical framework.

We investigate the welfare effects of vertical integration in U.S. multichannel television markets. Vertical integration in this market can enhance efficiency by aligning investment incentives and/or reducing double marginalization, but can also increase market power by encouraging raising...

Aging populations and increasing health-care costs will lead to an explosion in costs from long-term care (LTC) for permanently disabled elderly citizens. Governments are considering and implementing different kinds of policy responses, among them government-provided minimal care combined with...