Within the framework of a Diamond-Dybvig model (1983), but with explicitly modelling the autarky choice during the planning period, we demonstrate that a mixed strategy bank run equilibrium that does not rely on sunspots may coexist with the sunspot run equilibrium previously studied in the...

A political-economic theory of fiscal policy is presented in which tax policy preferences are derived from a conflict of interest between individuals of different ages. Policy formation is fully rational in that an individual's beliefs regarding future policies are consistent with...

A vintage capital model where the firm makes decisions about whether to replace or upgrade its old capital stock with new capital is developed in this paper. The model is used to study how technological characteristics of capital affect investment behavior. In particular, it is asked how the...

This paper shows that it is possible to analyze equilibrium inflation determination without any reference to either money supply or demand, as long as one specifies policy in terms of a "Wicksellian" interest-rate feedback rule. The paper's central result is an approximation theorem, showing the...

This paper reexamines the "cost of business cycle" calculations made by Lucas ("Models of Business Cycles," Basil Blackwell, New York, 1987) and Imrohoroglu (J. Polit. Econ. 97 (1989), 1364-1383) under alternative specifications of individuals' risk preferences and using alternative...

This paper develops and estimates an overlapping generations general equilibrium model of labor earnings, skill formation, and physical capital accumulation with heterogenous human capital. The model analyzes both schooling choices and post-school on-the-job investment in skills in a framework...

We examine a simple theory of altruism in which players' payoffs are linear in their own monetary income and their opponents. The weight on the opponent's income is private information and varies in the population, depending, moreover, on what the opponent's coefficient is believed to be. Using...

It is known that a variety of economic time series exhibit asymmetry in the sense that the arrival of a recession is prompt, while the recovery from a recession appears protracted. This paper provides an explanation for the asymmetric movement of economic time series over business cycles by...

New technology embodied in capital equipment can be adopted either through destruction of existing jobs and the creation of new ones or by renovation, updating the job's equipment. Under the assumption that the destruction of jobs generates worker layoffs, we show that higher productivity growth...

Various mechanism design models are used to study the allocation of risk and the allocation of productive resources in one ICRISAT village of India's semiarid tropics. This is done with the use of a specialty data base which tracked intensively the operation of a salient village institution. A...