This paper compares the intra-day patterns on the NYSE and AMEX of volatility, trading volume and bid-ask spreads for European dually- listed stocks, Japanese dually-listed stocks also listed in London, and Japanese dually-listed stocks not listed in London with American stocks of comparable...

This paper presents theory and evidence on horizontal industry structure, focusing on situations where plant-level scale economies are small and market power is not an issue. At issue is the question: what makes industries necessarily fragmented? The theoretical model distinguishes between the...

Although expectations (or subjective probability distributions) play a prominent role in models of decision-making under uncertainty, we have very little data on them and are instead forced to base our models on unverifiable assumptions. Macroeconomic models often assume rational expectations,...

This paper begins to evaluate some of the complicated set of economic adjustments which are going to occur as the uneven population age structure of the U.S. matures. It argues that in the 2012-2035 "crunch" years for the social security system not only will workers be scarce relative to...

The paper studies the effects of alternative financing policies in the open economy.There is a non-trivial role for financial policy because of the failure of first-order debt neutrality due to uncertain private lifetimes. Both the single-country case and the interdependent two-country case are...

By reducing risk of large out-of-pocket medical expenses, comprehensive social health insurance may reduce households' motivation to engage in precautionary behaviors such as saving, procurement of private insurance, and spousal labor-force participation. We use the natural experiment provided...

On Aug. 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PL 109-58). This was the first major piece of energy legislation enacted since 1992 following five years of Congressional efforts to pass energy legislation. Among other things, the law contains tax incentives worth over $14...

With a continuous decline in the cost of manipulating data and a continuous increase in the richness of data banks, policymakers have increasing opportunities to build and apply so-called micro-simulation models--modelsthat attempt to simulate the behavior of the individuals in a large...

Can the presence of nontraded consumption goods explain the high degree of 'home bias' displayed by investor portfolios? We find that the answer is no, so long as individuals have access to free international trade in financial assets. In particular, it is never optimal to exhibit home bias with...

We argue that time-series variation in the maturity of aggregate corporate debt issues arises because firms behave as macro liquidity providers, absorbing the large supply shocks associated with changes in the maturity structure of government debt. We document that when the government funds...