We investigate the welfare properties of the one-sector neoclassic growth model with uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks. We focus on the constrained efficiency notion of the general equilibrium literature, and we demonstrate constrained inefficiency for our model. We provide a characterization of...

This paper studies the implications of taxing overtime work to reduce the workweek. We study the roles played by team work, commuting costs and idiosyncratic output risk in determining the choice of the workweek. To obtain reliable estimates, we calibrate the model to the substitutability...

We propose a theory of unsecured debt that is based on the existence of private information about a person's type and on the fact that some debtors have the incentive to forego bankruptcy in order to signal their type. The theory formalizes the idea that the type of a person is relevant to...

In this paper we address the time-inconsistency of optimal debt policy—the incentive for a current government to “manipulate interest ratesâ€â€”raised in Lucas and Stokey’s celebrated 1983 paper. The literature that followed suggested various ways to fully overcome...

We revisit the issue of the usefulness of Social Security when there are frictions that prevent the existence of a fluid market for annuities. We model households as families and not as individual agents which provides a rationale for the existence of life insurance. Moreover, our structure also...

To what extent do imbalances in the ratio of men to women in the population account for the historical trends in marriage and divorce? To answer this question, we build a model of marriage with two main features. First, there exists asymmetry across men and women with respect to the length of...

José-Víctor Ríos-Rull is Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His main interests lie in distributional issues in macroeconomics, public economics and demographic economics.

This paper essentially puts together procedures that are used in the computation of equilibria in models with a very large number of heterogeneous agents. It is not a complete description of all procedures used in the literature. It describes procedures that deal with infinitely lived agent...

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- TABLES -- PREFACE -- CONTRIBUTORS -- 1. Economic Growth and Business Cycles -- 2. Recursive Methods for Computing Equilibria of Business Cycle Models -- 3. Computing Equilibria of Nonoptimal Economies -- 4. Models with Heterogeneous Agents -- 5....