What does an equal sacrifice tax look like in the case of a rank-dependent social welfare function? One's tax liability evidently becomes a function of one's income and one's position in the distribution in such a case, but not much else appears to be known. (Menahem Yaari touched upon the issue...

This paper proposes and tests a simple joint explanation for i) increases in marital and nonmarital birth rates in the United States over recent decades, ii) the dramatic rise in the share of nonmarital births, and iii) the pronounced racial differences in the timing of childbearing. The...

We consider optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian models with inertia. First order conditions, which we call the MJB-alternative, are found to improve upon the timeless perspective. The MJB-alternative is shown to be the best possible in the sense that it minimizes policymakers' unconditional...

Using recently developed indices of fractionalization and polarization, we analyze the direct and indirect effects of ethnic and religious heterogeneity on income inequality and on welfare programs across US states. We find strong evidence (1) that there is a positive relationship between ethnic...

We report results from economic experiments that provide a direct test of the hypothesis that criminal behavior responds rationally to changes in the possible rewards and in the probability and severity of punishment. The experiments involve decisions that are best described as petty larceny,...

Under rational expectations and risk neutrality the linear projection of exchange rate change on the forward premium has a unit coefficient. However, empirical estimates of this coefficient are significantly less than one (and often negative). We investigate whether replacing rational...

Poverty reduction has become a fundamental objective of development, and therefore a metric for assessing the effectiveness of various interventions. Economic growth can be a powerful instrument of income poverty reduction. This creates a need for meaningful ways of assessing the poverty impact...

This paper examines the extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) affects child labor. Using 1995 data for 145 countries, we find that, contrary to common fears, FDI is negatively correlated with child labor. This effect, however, disappears when controlling for per capita income. After...

We consider a linear univariate rational expectations model, with a predetermined variable, and study existence and stability of solutions driven by an extraneous finite-state Markov process. We show that when the model is indeterminate there exists a new class of k-state dependent sunspot...

This paper develops an adaptive learning formulation of an extension to the Ball, Mankiw and Reis (2005) sticky information model that incorporates endogenous inattention. We show that, following an exogenous increase in the policymaker's preferences for price vs. output stability, the learning...