This paper examines the small-sample distribution of the instrumental variables (IV) estimation procedure employed by Gali and Gertler (1999) to assess the empirical fit of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) and the hybrid Phillips Curve (HPC). Their estimation method is now widely used to...

I study the optimal joint taxation of income and health expenditures in a model in which individuals face idiosyncratic prices for leisure and health. First-best redistribution based on potential wage rates and health status is not feasible. Within a class of quasi-linear schedules, the...

Several different theoretical models of economic growth and environmental quality each generate inverse-U-shaped pollution-income paths, or "environmental Kuznets curves." They rely on different assumptions to generate the reversal of pollution trends, with correspondingly different policy...

When does an individual's expected wealth accumulation profile increase as earnings risk increases? This paper answers this question for multi-period models where earnings shocks are independent over time. Sufficient conditions are stated in terms of properties of a decision rule for savings...

This paper analyzes welfare-state determinants of individual attitudes towards immigrants - within and across countries - and their interaction with labor-market drivers of preferences. We consider two different mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of...

Intergenerational mobility in income and education is affected by the influence of parents on children's school choices. Our focus is on the role played by different school systems in reducing or magnifying the impact of parents on children's school choices and therefore on intergenerational...

Over the period 1972-1986, the U.S. business cycle was strongly correlated with the business cycle in the rest of the industrialized world. Over the period 1986-2000, international co-movement was much weaker (real regionalization). At the same time, U.S. international asset trade has increased...

A single principal interacts with several agents, offering them contracts. The crucial assumption of this paper is that the outside-option payoffs of the agents depend positively on how many free agents there are (these are agents who are not under contract). We study how such a principal,...

This paper studies the evolution of political institutions in the face of conflict. We examine institutional reform in a class of pivotal mechanisms -- institutions that behave as if the resulting policy were determined by a "pivotal" decision maker drawn from the potential population of...