This paper posits a notion of the value of an individual's human capital and the associated return on human capital. These concepts are examined using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset returns. We decompose the value of human capital into a bond, a stock and a residual value...

Dark matter is believed to account for 83 percent of the matter in the universe and plays a central role in cosmology modeling. This paper argues that an analogous form of dark matter plays a similarly important role in international macroeconomics. Like its cosmological counterpart,...

We study the relative performance of disclosure and auditing in organizations. We consider the information transmission problem between two decision makers who take actions at dates 1 and 2 respectively. The first decision maker has private information about a state of nature that is relevant...

Since 2013 regulators have been investigating the activities of some of the world's largest banks around the setting of daily benchmarks for forex prices. These benchmarks are a key linchpin of world financial markets, providing standardize prices used to value global equity and bond portfolios,...

Using data from an experiment conducted in 70 Colombian communities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when trust is crucial to enforce risk pooling arrangements. We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and social networks. Both theoretically and empirically, we find that close...

We assess the consequences of substantially increasing the marginal tax rate on U.S. top earners using a human capital model. The top of the model Laffer curve occurs at a 53 percent top tax rate. Tax revenues and the tax rate at the top of the Laffer curve are smaller compared to an otherwise...

This paper describes a new analytical framework for the quantitative assessment of international external positions. The framework links each country's current net foreign asset position to its current trade flows, forecasts of future trade flows, and expectations concerning future returns on...

An Inequality involving expectations of functions of a random variable is presented and shown to provide the key to the comparative statics of an important class of problems arising in Economics and Finance. The inequality in question is also shown to yield novel generalizations of the...

In this paper, we demonstrate the efficiency of seller entry in a model of competing auctions. We generalize the competitive search literature by simultaneously allowing for nonrival (many on one) meetings and private information. We consider both the case in which buyers learn their valuations...

Starting in the 1970s California's residential electricity consumption per capita stopped increasing, while other states' electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. Had other states' energy use followed...