Previous research has documented a behavioral distinction between "social risk" and financial risk. For example, individuals tend to demand a premium on the objective probability of a favorable outcome when that outcome is determined by a human being instead of a randomizing device (Bohnet,...

We study the long-term consequences of war on health and human capital of Europeans born during the first half of the twentieth century, a period that has been termed the "era of two world wars". This period includes not only WW1 and WW2, but also the Spanish Flu and a long series of armed con...

We present a model that characterizes the relationship between optimal dynamic cash management and the choice of the means of payment. The novel feature of the model is the sequential nature of the payments choice. In each instant the agent can choose to pay with either cash or credit. This...

While both cultural and legal norms (institutions) help foster cooperation, culture is the more primitive of the two and itself sustains formal institutions. Cultural changes are rarer and slower than changes in legal institutions, which makes it difficult to identify the role played by culture....

We use quasi-random variation in the fraction of time served in the Italian “open-cell prison” of Bollate to estimate the effect of rehabilitation efforts on recidivism. We deal with the endogeneity of rehabilitation assignments by focussing on those sources of variability in the length of...

It has long been recognized that variations in expected future cash flows are not enough to account for variations in asset prices. Variation in willingness to bear risk is also needed. Asset pricing theories have accordingly focused on models characterized by preferences that allow for time...

We illustrate an intuitive channel through which price stickiness limits the ability of a central bank to improve welfare through stabilization policy. If the central bank uses infl ation to obtain information about nominal spending, sticky prices impair the learning ability of the central bank...