In many markets firms set posted prices which are potentially negotiable. We analyze the optimal marketing mix of pricing and bargaining when price takers buy at posted prices but bargainers attempt to negotiate discounts. The optimal bargaining strategy involves the firms offering bargainers...

Heterogeneity in bank responses to monetary policy is consistent with an aggregate lending channel. However, estimates of bank responses are typically obtained using realized federal funds rate changes, which are endogenous to expected, macroeconomic fundamentals. As such, estimated...

For a simplified structural equation/IV regression model with one right-side endogenous variable, we obtain the exact conditional distribution function for Moreira's (2003) conditional likelihood ratio (CLR) test. This is then used to obtain the critical value function needed to implement the...

This paper examines the interactions between household formation, inequality, and per capita income. We develop a model in which agents decide to become skilled or unskilled and form households. We show that the equilibrium sorting of spouses by skill type (their correlation in skills) is an...

Estimates for the U.S. suggest that in some sectors productivity enhancing reallocation is the dominant factor in accounting for productivity growth. An open question is whether reallocation is always productivity enhancing. Specifically, in developing countries, market concentration, or...

The Barro-Becker model is a simple intuitive model of fertility choice. In its original formulation, however, it has not been very successful at reproducing the changes in fertility choice in response to decreased mortality and increased income growth that demographers have emphasized in...

Simulating the outcome of an intervention is a central problem in many fields as this allows decision-makers to quantify the effect of any given strategy and, hence, to evaluate different schemes of actions. Simulation is particularly relevant in very large systems where the statistical model...

Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of “kleptocrats”, who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption. We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in...

This paper proposes an explanation of the puzzling coexistence of elements of both inertia and dynamism in the Russian labor market. In an environment of high uncertainty, risk averse and heterogeneous workers face a trade-off between wages and insurance against risk. The firm proposes a...

Among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse, Roughgarden and Smith (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 93 (1996) 5078) argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management: variability in fish dynamics, inaccurate...