Many researchers have recommended to increase public debt in the aftermath of the fi nancial crisis in order to relax borrowing constraints for private households. This advice is based on the common assumption that borrowing conditions of private agents are exogenous to public policy. We study...

What are the welfare consequences of debt reduction policies? In this paper, we answer this question with the help of an incomplete markets economy with production in which households are subject to uninsurable income shocks. We focus on policies that raise revenues from taxing income. We make...

To what extent is public debt private liquidity? Much policy advice given in the aftermath of the financial crisis rests on the assumption that increasing public debt relaxes borrowing constraints of private households. This is the case for ad-hoc debt limits, which are exogenous to public...

In this paper, I analyze the determinants of college enrolment and the changes in these determinants over time. I propose a quantitative life-cycle model with college enrolment. Altruistic parents provide financial support to their children. Using counterfactual experiments, I find that 24...

This paper examines the extent to which intergenerational links through transfers of wealth and investment in human capital might help in accounting for the wealth inequality observed in U.S. data. We examine an overlapping-generations heterogeneous agents economy with idiosyncratic risk and...

In recent decades, the US has experienced a widening of the college enrolment gap between rich and poor families. This is commonly interpreted as evidence for a tightening of borrowing constraints. This paper asks whether this is indeed the case. I present an incomplete-markets...

Assessing the importance of borrowing constraints for college entry is key for education policy analysis in the U.S. economy. I present a computable dynamic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations and incomplete markets that allows me to measure the fraction of households...

This thesis contains several lines of research conducted during my four years at the European University Institute. It consists of three chapters that analyze the link between parental inter-vivos transfers, education and inequality. In the first chapter, "Accounting for the Changing Role of...

Bei Public Private Partnerships (PPP) spielt der Wirtschaftlichkeitsvergleich eine entscheidende Rolle. Er dient zur Ermittlung von Effizienzvorteilen und Einsparungen einer Realisierungsvariante (öffentlicher Eigenbau oder privatwirtschaftlich) und als Argumentationsgrundlage sowie...