How large are the gains from trade? Do all trade models have the ‘same old gains’? Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodriguez-Clare (2012) show that many quantitative trade models that summarize trade responses via a single elasticity have the same welfare implications. I develop a flexible approach...

This paper presents a model and an experiment, both suggesting that wishful thinking is a pervasive phenomenon that aect decisions large and small. Agents in the model start out with state-dependent payos, and behave as if high-payo states are more likely. Subsequent choices maximize...

Globally, suicide has emerged as the second leading cause of death among youth aged 10-24 years old. In order to better understand the causes of this phenomenon, we investigate the relationship between suicidal ideation and cannabis use. Our empirical analysis is based on a 30 year longitudinal...

We develop and estimate a small open economy DSGE model to investigate the eectiveness of the Australian scal stimulus package introduced in the aftermath of the global nancial crisis (GFC). The timing and magnitudes of GFC shocks, scal shocks that mimic the stimulus transfers, and accommodative...

We test the hypothesis that the effect of foreign aid on economic growth is positive in ethnically homogenous countries, but decreasing in ethnic fractionalization. Using panel data covering 114 aid recipient countries over the period 1962 to 2001, and employing two-stage least squares and GMM...

This paper re-examines the VAR analysis of the price puzzle with regard to the issues of measurement, identification and misspecification. In an empirical analysis conducted for the US economy, we consider alternative measures of economic activity and inflation, alternative assumptions to...

This paper discusses two ways to amend the optimal lending contract under asymmetric information studied in Clementi and Hopenhayn (2006) to change its long-run implications so that firm growth and exit driven by borrowing constraints exist in the long run. One way assumes that the entrepreneur...

The growing literature on financial literacy suggests people in many countries are poorly prepared for making major financial decisions. One important sub-population rarely examined by financial literacy studies is immigrants, who have specialized financial needs related to remittances. This...

This paper studies a complete-information bargaining game with one buyer and multiple sellers of di¤erent ?sizes? or bargaining strengths. The bargaining order is determined by the buyer. If the buyer can commit to a bargaining order, there is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome where...

We develop a general approach to estimation and inference for income distributions using grouped or aggregate data that are typically available in the form of population shares and class mean incomes, with unknown group bounds. Generic moment conditions and an optimal weight matrix that can be...