In this paper we examine the risk situation facing individuals in the labor market. The current consensus in the literature is that the labor income process has a large random walk component. We argue two points. First, the direct estimates of this parameter (from labor income data) appear to be...

We quantify the inefficiency of the retirement component of the US social security system within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic labor-productivity shocks that are privately observed

This paper takes stock of the achievements toward integration in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) 10 years after the 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc. It investigates the lessons learned and evaluates progress toward economic convergence, examines the evolution of trade and...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between trade and total factor productivity (TFP) in South Africa. It uses (i) a time series approach where trade is defined in terms of aggregate outcomes, i.e., as the share of imports plus exports in GDP, and (ii) a cross sectional approach,...

Can positive growth shocks from the faster-growing countries in Europe spill over to the slower growing countries, providing useful tailwinds to their recovery process? This study investigates the potential relevance of growth spillovers in the context of the crisis and the recovery process....

There is much interest in the causes of several adverse health outcomes in middle and old age. In searching for new explanations for adverse health outcomes later in life, researchers have started to look beyond behavioural risk factors to examine the effect of shocks to health in utero and in...

We explore the accumulation of capital in the presence of limited insurance against idiosyncratic shocks, borrowing constraints and endogenous labor supply. In the exogenous labor supply case (e.g. Aiyagari 1994, Huggett 1997), the presence of limited insurance increases the demand for savings...

In this survey article, we report results on the existence of pure-strategy Nash equilibria in games with an atomless continuum of players, each with an action set that is not necessarily finite. We also discuss purification and symmetrization of mixed-strategy Nash equilibria, and settings in...