Little attempt has been made so far to quantify the extent to which individual willingness to spend on life protection may account for the observed trends and diversities in agespecific life expectancies across individuals and over time. We address these issues via calibrated simulations of a...

We model investment in entrepreneurial human capital (EHC) - the representative enterprise's share of production capacity allocated to investment in innovative industrial and commercial knowledge - as a distinct channel through which firm-specific human capital drives endogenous growth. Our...

Census data from international sources covering 77% of the world's migrant population indicate that the skill composition of migrants in major destination countries, including the US, has been rising over the last 4 decades. Moreover, the population share of skilled migrants has been approaching...

The apparently unrelenting growth in the GDP-share of health spending (SHS) has been a perennial issue of policy concern. Does an equilibrium limit exist? The issue has been left open in recent dynamic models which take income growth and population aging as given. We view these variables as...

The problem of the uninsured cannot be fully understood without considering the role of non-market alternatives to 'market insurance' called 'self-insurance' and 'self-protection' (SISP), including the public 'health care safety-net' system. We tackle the problem by formulating a...

We build an infinite horizon equilibrium model of fiscal federation, where anticipation of transfers from the central government creates incentives for local governments to overborrow. Absent commitment, the central government over-transfers, which distorts the central-local distribution of...

During recessions, the U.S. government substantially increases the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits through multiple extensions. This paper seeks to understand the incentives driving these increases. Because of the trade-off between insurance and job search incentives, the...

During recessions, the U.S. government substantially increases the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits through multiple extensions. This paper seeks to understand the incentives driving these increases. Because of the trade-off between insurance and job search incentives, the...

This paper develops a dynamic infinite-horizon model with two layers of governments to study theoretically and quantitatively how fiscal decentralization affects local and central government debt accumulation and spending. In the model, the central government makes transfers to local governments...