South Africa simultaneously lost more than 890, 000 jobs, and saw an increase in the number of skilled workers, from 1989 to 1999. We argue this is the consequence of 'well-documented acute apartheid-era distortions which led to a current coordination failure where (i) firms are locked into a...

This paper studies the impact of family structures and elders' participation status on sectoral labor allocation in developing agricultural economies. In an overlapping generations framework with adult and old agents, we model a landlord's decision to hire adult apprentices and elder unskilled...

Information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection. This paper applies this sequence of tests to Mauritian slave auctions. Dynamic auction theory with private value highlights more aggressive bidding by uninformed bidders and higher prices when an informed...

This paper studies the impact of families on sectoral labor allocation in developing agricultural economies. In an overlapping generations framework, we equate a family to a contingent-claims contract. Families are endogenous by design. A risk-averse adult facing possible unemployment may be...

Evidence on adverse selection in slave markets remains inconclusive. We study this question through notarial acts on public slave auctions in Mauritius between 1825 and 1835, involving 4,286 slaves. In addition to slave characteristics, the acts document the identities of buyers and sellers. We...

The level of financial literacy in developed countries is low and contributes to growing wealth inequality. Benefits from increasing the level of financial literacy include more effective saving for retirement and better debt management. However, there are significant costs in terms of time and...

We study the effects of liquidity constraints and start-up costs on the relationship betweenwealth and the fraction of entrepreneurs in an economy. We develop a dynamic occupationalchoice model with endogenous wealth and entry into entrepreneurship...

We look at the effect of the 2000 repeal of the earnings test above the normal retirement age(NRA) on retirement expectations of male workers in the Health and Retirement Study(HRS). Using administrative records on Social Security benefit entitlements linked to the HRSsurvey data, we can...