This paper quantifies the welfare cost of consumption externalities in an endogenous growth model with habit formation. Agent’s utility depends on both current consumption and a reference consumption level determined by economy-wide average past consumption. Although utility may be lower in...

The recent literature has shown that income inequality is one of the main causes of borrowing and debt accumulation by working households. This paper explores the possibility that household indebtedness is an important cause of rising income inequality. If workers experience rising debt burdens,...

We scrutinize Thomas Piketty's (2014) theory concerning the relationship between an economy's long-run growth rate, its capital-income ratio, and its factor income distribution put forth in his recent book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. We find that a smaller long-run growth rate may be...

This paper presents an interpretation of post-1953 Colombian economic growth and a discussion on future outcomes. The interpretation takes the form of a data playback guided by the decentralized equilibrium version of the Cass-Koopmans-Ramsey model. The role of technical change as a driver of...

This paper investigates household decisions when individual utility depends on a consumption reference level. The desire to “keep up with the Joneses'' represents one such example. The prior literature shows that, in a Ramsey model, consumption externalities have no impact on steady state...

This article proposes an exogenous growth model for three sectors based on a simple general equilibrium structure replicating the patterns of structural change which have affected many countries. The model shows that structural change can be explained by per capita capital being accumulating by...

This paper studies the effect of digitalization on consumption inequality. We assemble a novel dataset of digital technology in the consumption basket of US households and establish a new stylized fact: High-income households have a higher consumption share of digital products than low-income...

We study a minimal model of automation in which, in the limit, labor is replaced by capital in all tasks. If tasks are gross complements and automation is sufficiently slow, the labor share remains strictly positive despite an endogenous reduction in hours worked and full automation in the...

How should the government redistribute current income in an economic environment where more education by private agents crowds out physical capital, causes an excessive increase in the rate of return to physical capital relative to human capital, and lowers economic growth? Should the government...