This paper studies the long-run aggregate and welfare effects of eliminating Social Security in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium life-cycle model where parents and their children are linked by voluntary and accidental bequests. Social Security in this model with impure altruism has a...

We re-examine the effects of population aging and pension reforms in an OLG model with labor market frictions. The most important feature brought about by labor market frictions is the connection between the interest rate and the unemployment rate. Exogenous shocks (such as aging) leading to...

We develop a formal model to investigate the implications of bounded rationality for the origin and structure of loss aversion and optimism in marketplaces. Based on Simon's original description, we explicitly model bounded rationality as a decision mechanism that captures incomplete...

Options and structured products have no roles in mean–variance portfolios, but they have roles in behavioral portfolios. Behavioral portfolios are composed of mental account sub-portfolios, each associated with a goal, such as retirement income or bequest. Investors optimize each mental...

This paper presents a business cycle model capturing the stylized features of housing-market boom-bust cycles in developed countries. The model implies that over-optimism of mortgage borrowers generates housing-market boom-bust cycles, if mortgage borrowers are credit-constrained and savers do...

We present a flexible approach for the valuation of interest rate derivatives based on affine processes. We extend the methodology proposed in Keller-Ressel et al. (in press) by changing the choice of the state space. We provide semi-closed-form solutions for the pricing of caps and floors. We...

In this paper I provide a stopping-time-based solution to a long-term contracting problem between a risk-neutral principal and a risk-averse agent. The agent faces a stochastic income stream and cannot commit to the long-term contracting relationship. To compute the optimal contract, I also...

Human capital investment in early childhood can lead to large and persistent gains. Beyond this window of opportunity, human capital accumulation is more costly. Despite compelling evidence in support of this notion, government education spending is allocated disproportionately toward late...

Optimal control of dynamic econometric models has a wide variety of applications including economic policy relevant issues. There are several algorithms extending the basic case of a linear-quadratic optimization and taking nonlinearity and stochastics into account, but being still limited in a...

In a dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous markups and labor market frictions, we investigate the effects of increased product market competition. Unlike most macroeconomic models of search, we endogenize the labor supply along the extensive margin. We find numerically that a model...