We study a variant of the conventional keeping-up-with-the-Joneses setup in whichheterogeneous-ability agents care both about consumption and leisure and receive anutility premium if their consumption exceeds that of the Joneses’. Unlike the conventionalsetup in which all agents are assumed to...

In an overlapping generations model, momentary equilibria are defined as points that lieon the intergenerational offer curve, i.e., they satisfy agents’ optimality conditions and marketclearing at any date. However, some dynamic sequences commencing from such points may notbe considered valid...

Much of Africa has been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. There, heterosexual contactis the primary mode of transmission for the HIV virus. Even when access to condomsis good and their price low, a large fraction of young Africans continue to engage inunprotected sex. In this paper, we propose a...

In this paper, we argue that the observed di¤erence in the cost of intraday and overnightliquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interestcharged on overnight liquidity a¤ects output while the cost of intraday liquidity onlyaffects the distribution of...

In this paper, we study a decentralized monetary economy witha speci…ed set of markets, rules of trade, an equilibrium concept, and a restricted setof policies and derive a set of equilibrium (monetary) allocations generated by thesepolicies. Next we set up a simpler constrained planning...

Rejuveniles are "grown-ups who cultivate juvenile tastes in products and entertain-ment". In this note, we study a standard AK growth model of overlapping gener-ations populated by rejuveniles. For our purposes, rejuveniles are old agents whoderive utility from "keeping up" their consumption...

This paper studies a overlapping generations economy with capital where limitedcommunication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for…at money. We assume a production function with a knowledge-externality (Romer-style) that nests economies with endogenous growth (AK...

This paper introduces endogenous longevity risk in an otherwisestandard overlapping generations model with capital. In the model, an agent mayincrease the length of her old age by incurring investments in her own health fundedfrom her wage income. Such private health investments are more...

Faced with real and nominal shocks, what should a benevolent central bankdo, …x the money growth rate or target the inflation rate? In this paper, wemake a …rst attempt at studying the optimal choice of monetary policy in-struments in a micro-founded model of money. Speci…cally, we produce...

The Friedman rule, a widely studied prescription for monetary policy, is optimal inTownsend’s turnpike model of money; it is not so in the overlapping generations versionof his stochastic relocation model of money. We investigate these monetary models inthe light of this disparity. To that...