Using time-diary data from 25 countries, we demonstrate that there is a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time per day—the sum of work for pay and work at home. In rich northern countries on four continents there is no...

Labour market frictions are not the only possible source of high unemployment. Credit market imperfections, driven by microeconomic frictions and influenced by macroeconomic factors, could also be to blame. To develop this idea in a simple and tractable macroeconomic model, we treat credit and...

The thesis of this paper is that there is no historical precedent for Europe’s monetary union (EMU). While it is possible to point to similar historical experiences, the most obvious of which were in the 19th century, occurred in Europe, and had “union” as part of their names, EMU differs...

Abel (2002) shows that pessimism and doubt in the subjective distribution of the growth rate of consumption reduce the risk-free rate puzzle and the equity premium puzzle. We quantify the amount of pessimism and doubt in survey data on US consumption and income. Individual forecasters are, in...

The process of financial globalization has significantly altered the environment in which national monetary policy authorities operate. What implications does this have for the design of monetary policy? The question can be properly addressed only in the context of a model where monetary policy...

The great majority of international contracts provide for arbitration in the event of dispute. Legal scholars argue that international arbitration is causing the development of a legal doctrine attuned to the needs of business and independent of national laws. This paper studies international...

The work presented in this paper falls into two parts. First, using a simple model and within the context of the central bank’s objective of price stability, it is shown that the optimal monetary response to unexpected changes in asset prices depends on how these changes affect the central...

This paper reviews evidence that life-cycle saving became the norm in nineteenth-century America, with a consequent fall in fertility and rise in the rate of capital formation, and considers whether a similar transition to life-cycle saving can be observed in nineteenth-century Britain. Although...

Economists often play crucial roles in designing and implementing public policies; thus it is of importance to better understand the values that underlie their decisions. We explore the value hierarchies of economists in four studies: The first two studies examine whether value differences exist...

The stagnating West European population combined with the prosperous economic development of the European Community (EC) generate strong economic incentives for immigration. The drastic political changes in Eastern Europe generate emigration pressures. There are a variety of problems with...