This paper focuses on the problem of formulating an analysis of economic policy that is consistent with rational expectations. Cooley, LeRoy,and Raymon show that the Lucas and Sargent strategy for econometric policy evaluation is itself vulnerable to the logic of the Lucas critique. The present...

Between 1946 and 1976, the European powers granted independence to all of their large colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia. This paper attempts to provide an economic explanation for this remarkable ending to the era of colonialism. The main theoretical innovation is to consider the effect of...

This paper analyzes the possible inception of rational inflationary bubbles under the assumption that the empirically relevant environment precludes the existence of rational deflationary bubbles. The analysis shows that if a rational inflationary bubble exists, then it must have started on the...

Why do sovereign states sometimes fail to settle territorial disputes peacefully? Also, why do even peaceful settlements of territorial disputes rarely call for the resulting border to be unfortified? This paper explores a class of answers to these questions that is based on the following...

This paper analyzes the theoretical possibility of rationalbubbles in stock prices in a model in which stockholders haveinfinite planning horizons and in which free disposal of equityrules out the existence of negative rational bubbles. Theanalysis shows that in this framework if a positive...

This essay analyzes current fiscal policy in the United States within an historical context. The objective is to clarify why recent developments in the United States are troubling, but also to understand why the United States, in contrast to other countries such as Italy, has so far avoided the...

This paper explores one of the ways in which acceptance of the hypothesis that labor market transactions involve arrangements for shifting risk from workers to employers strengthens the case for accepting the hypothesis that incomplete information is the critical factor in producing the positive...

This paper develops a theoretical model that relates changes in educational inequality to the combined effects of innovations that have increased the relative demand for more educated labor and innovations that have increased ability premiums. Under the assumption that in the long run individual...

This paper analyzes the intertemporal efficiency and optimality of steady states within overlapping-generations models in which the utility of individual working couples , depends on the consumption of their parents and children as well as their own consumption. The analysis considers both a...

The solution to a linear model in which supply and/or demand depends on rational expectations of future prices can involve three parts, which we denote as the fundamental component, the deterministic bubble component, and the stochastic bubble component. This paper explores the properties of...