Overall, the issue of whether Europeans are lazy or Americans are crazy seems of second-order importance relative to understanding the determinants of individual behavior. Amore useful, scientific approach is to assume that underlying tastes are common to both continents, while technologies,...

The purpose of this note is to simply point out that the multiplicity, intrinsic of course to the presence of non-convexities, characterizes the models of growth with external increasing returns which have been studied recently, and, more importantly, to show that the many competitive equilibria...

This paper reconsiders the determination of asset returns in a model with Kreps-Porteus generalized isoelastic preferences where returns appear governed on the basis of Euler equations, by a combination of the two most common measures of risk -- covariance with the market return and covariance...

This paper investigates the economics of ”blue laws” or restrictions on shop-opening hours, most commonly imposed on Sunday trading. We show that in the presence of communal leisure or ”ruinous competition” externalities, retail regulations can have real effects in a simple general...

Using time-diary data from 25 countries, we demonstrate that there is a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time per day—the sum of work for pay and work at home. In rich northern countries on four continents there is no difference—...

No abstract available for this item.

In a dynamically efficient economy, can a government roll its debt forever and avoid the need to raise taxes? In a series of examples of economies with zero growth, this paper shows that such Ponzi games may be infeasible even when the average rate of return on bonds is negative, and may be...

Using time-diary data from 27 countries, we demonstrate a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time—the sum of work for pay and work at home. We also show that in rich non-Catholic countries on four continents men and women do the same...

We build a model of endogenous destruction with credit and labor market imperfections, represented by a matching process between financiers and entrepreneurs on one hand, and entrepreneurs and workers on the other hand. Business creation, credit opening and job destruction represent three active...

Time-diary data from 27 countries show a negative relationship between GDP per capita and gender differences in total work—for pay and at home. In rich non-Catholic countries men and women average about the same amount of total work. Survey results show scholars and the general public believe...