Beginning in 1999, the Chinese government initiated a substantial restructuring of its roughly 4,000 research institutes. While many were given specific classifications to designate their institute objectives, many were left unconverted. We use a novel, fifteen-year panel dataset on China’s...

I consider a consumption based asset pricing model where the consumer does not know if shocks to dividends are stationary (temporary) or non-stationary (permanent). The agent uses a Bayesian learning algorithm with a bias towards recent observations to assign probability to each process. While...

This paper shows that the Mortensen-Pissarides (MP) model requires endogenous separation to explain the volatility of unemployment. I estimate a version of the MP model with wage rigidity and permanent shocks to match productivity. The model generates sufficient volatility in unemployment,...

This paper documents three empirical facts. First, the volatility of consumption growth relative to income growth rose from 1947-1960 and then fell dramatically by 50 percent from the 1960s to the 1990s. Second, the correlation between consumption growth and personal income growth fell by about...

I compare unemployment expectations from the Michigan Survey of Consumers to VAR forecastable movements in unemployment. I document three key facts. First, one-half to one-third of the population expects unemployment to rise when it is falling at the end of a recession even though the VAR...

I consider a real-business cycle, DSGE model where consumption is a function of the present discounted value of wage and capital income. The agent is uncertain if these income variables are stationary or non-stationary and puts positive probability on both representations. The agent uses...

We use a novel, fifteen-year panel dataset on China's system of research institutes to examine the determinates of knowledge production, the role external factors play in increasing research productivity, and the extent to which distance mitigates these spillovers. We find robust evidence that...

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are an innovative financing mechanism for public goods. In a SIB, an investor provides capital to a service provider for a social intervention. The investor receives a return based on the outcome of the intervention relative to a predetermined benchmark. We describe...