This paper is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of resources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation of...

Periods of low household wealth in United States macroeconomic history have also been periods of high business cycle volatility. This paper develops a simple model that can exhibit self-fulfilling fluctuations in the expected path for unemployment. The novel feature is that the scope for...

Periods of low household wealth in United States macroeconomic history have also been periods of high business cycle volatility. This paper develops a simple model that can exhibit self-fulfilling fluctuations in the expected path for unemployment. The novel feature is that the scope for...

The international diversification puzzle is the fact that country portfolios are on average biased toward domestic assets, while one-good international macro models with nondiversifiable labor income risk predict the opposite pattern of diversification. This paper embeds a portfolio choice...

This paper is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of resources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation of...

Over the period 1972-86, the correlations of GDP, employment and investment between the United States and an aggregate of Europe, Canada and Japan were respectively 0.76, 0.66 and 0.63. For the period 1986 to 2000 the same correlations were much lower: 0.26, 0.03, and -0.07 (real...

In simple one-good international macro models, the presence of non-diversifiable labor income risk means that country portfoliosshould be heavily biased toward foreign assets. The fact that theopposite pattern of diversification is observed empirically constitutes the international...

In this paper we do two things. First we document that over the last 40 years the U.S. business cycle has become less synchronized with the cycle in the rest of the world. Second we try to explain why this has happened. We use a general-equilibrium model as a tool to discriminate between two...

In simple one-good international macro models, the presence of non-diversifiable labor income risk means that country portfolios should be heavily biased toward foreign assets. The fact that the opposite pattern of diversification is observed empirically constitutes the international...

We conduct a systematic empirical study of cross-sectional inequality in the United States, integrating data from the Current Population Survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and the Survey of Consumer Finances. In order to understand how different...