There is a large amount of cross-sectional evidence for a midlife low in the life cycle of human happiness and well-being (a ‘U shape’). Yet no genuinely longitudinal inquiry has uncovered evidence for a U-shaped pattern. Thus some researchers believe the U is a statistical artefact. We...

Complex interactions between high-skilled migration and aggregate performance govern the dynamics of growth and inequality across nations. Due to lack of data, these interdependencies have not been extensively studied in the economics literature. This paper takes advantage of the availability of...

We present a game theoretic model to explain why people form life long monogamous families. Three components are essential in our framework, paternal investment, fatherhood uncertainty, and, perhaps the most distinctive feature of all, the overlap of children of different ages. When all three...

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and ‘defense news’. We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.3 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to...

In this paper I compute the welfare effect of the Great Moderation, using a consumption based asset pricing model. The Great Moderation is modelled according to the data properties of consumption and dividend growth, which display a reduction of their innovation-volatility and increased...

Cooperating behavior may be fostered by personality traits reflecting either favorable inclination to others or willingness to comply with norms and rules. We test the relative importance of these two factors in an experiment where subjects provide real mental effort in two treatments with...

We evaluate whether the introduction of pessimistic homogeneous beliefs in the frictionless Lucas-Mehra-Prescott model and the Kehoe-Levine-Alvarez-Jermann model with endogenous borrowing constraints, helps explain the equity premium, the risk-free rate and the equity volatility puzzles as well...

In this paper, by using several statistical tools, we provide evidence of increased persistence of the U.S. total factor productivity. In a forward-looking model, agents’ optimal behavior depends on the autocorrelation structure of the exogenous shocks. Since many monetary models are driven by...

For choice with deterministic consequences, the standard rationality hypothesis is ordinality — i.e., maximization of a weak preference ordering. For choice under risk (resp. uncertainty), preferences are assumed to be represented by the objectively (resp. subjectively) expected value of a von...

Harsanyi's original position treats personal identity, upon which each individual's utility depends, as risky. Pattanaik's critique is related to the problem of scaling \state-dependent" von Neumann{Morgenstern utility when determining subjective probabilities. But a unique social welfare...