I examine the argument that a low interest rate policy can lead to "overvalued" private assets or privately created bubbles (private bubbles). Using the standard approach to bubbles, I find that a policy of a low real interest rate may support private bubbles but a policy of a low nominal...

Empirical evidence suggests that both leisure time and medical care are important for maintaining health. We develop a general equilibrium macroeconomic model in which taxation is a key determinant of the composition of these two inputs in the endogenous accumulation of health capital. In our...

Financial frictions and financial shocks can affect the trade-off between inflation stabilization and output-gap stabilization faced by a central bank. Financial frictions lead to a greater response in output following any deviation of inflation from target and thus lead to an increase in the...

The "Federalist financial revolution" may have jump-started the U.S. economy into modern growth, but the Free Banking System (1837-1862) did not play a direct role in sustaining it. Despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions, we find in county-level data that...

This thesis examines the strategic incentives of market players under constrained situations that generate economic externalities. The first chapter considers a model of competition in which economic activity takes place through networks of bilateral interactions. Economic externalities in this...

The following is an outline of the four chapters of this dissertation. Chapter 1 shows that subgame perfect equilibrium and weak perfect Bayesian equilibrium require rationality at information sets that are irrelevant for determining whether outcomes are sustained by sequentially rational play....

This dissertation is comprised of three essays. The first essay tests the empirical validity of a statistical discrimination model that incorporates employer's race. I show that if an employer statistically discriminates less against an employee that shares the same race (match) than an employee...