This paper examines Thomas Piketty's thesis that there are no natural limits on accumulation of wealth. We undertake our examination in the context of a simple general equilibrium model with infintely-lived dynasties. We show that extreme wealth accumulation does not happen in general...

This study tests the degree to which payday and title lenders differentiate their store location and interest rates based on the socioeconomic characteristics of the areas in which they operate. We use store-level lender data, geographically matched IRS income data, and Census Bureau demographic...

First, we propose a more e¢ cient implementation of the Smolyak method for inter- polation, namely, we show how to avoid costly evaluations of repeated basis functions in the conventional Smolyak formula. Second, we extend the Smolyak method to include anisotropic constructions; this allows us...

I analyze the effects of network structure, in particular network centrality, on vulnerability disclosure policy. My analysis finds that the structure of the network of households can greatly effect the overall welfare of the economy. Specifically, I find that the distribution of the centrality...

The theoretical literature on generational risk assumes that this risk is large and that the government can effectively share it. To assess these assumptions, this paper simulates a realistically calibrated 80-period overlapping generations life-cycle model with aggregate productivity shocks....

This paper considers a model which incorporates Schumpeterian type growth into an otherwise standard RBC model similar to the one in Phillips & Wrase (2006). We consider a model with three sources of shocks. The first is a standard productivity shock. The second is a set of Schumpeterian...

This paper defines a monetary equilibrium and computes an optimal nonlinear, full-information, state-dependent monetary policy rule to which the monetary authority commits at the beginning of time. This type of optimal monetary policy represents a combination of the flexibility of discretion...

Bounds for the skewness kurtosis space corresponding to the skewed generalized T, skewed generalized error, skewed T, and some other distributions are presented and contrasted with the bounds reported by Klaassen et al.(2000) for unimodal probability density functions. The skewed generalized T...

Data censoring causes ordinary least squares estimators of linear models to be biased and inconsistent. The Tobit estimator yields consistent estimators in the presence of data censoring if the errors are normally distributed. However, non-normality or heteroskedasticity results in the Tobit...

A number of flexible distributions (generalized beta of the second kind, inverse hyperbolic sine, g-and-h, Weibull, Burr-3, Burr-12, generalized gamma) are examined in the setting of option-pricing to explore potential improvements over the standard assumption of lognormal returns. Price...