In this paper we study the optimal cross sectional distribution of health care expenditures in a Mirrleesian style environment. We find that, under standard assumptions from the health literature, more productive types should have better health care and that all types should have some health...

taxes on family size.

Business Cycle Accounting (BCA) is a helpful litmus test for quantitive macroeconomic models. Indeed, deviations from the data and a neo-classical growth model can be summarized as distortion of the efficiency of production or to optimality conditions such as leisure-consumption choices and...

This paper studies the optimal lending contract between an international lender and a sovereign country. A benevolent government finances uncertain expenditures - which are privately observed by the country - using external debt and optimally choosing domestic debt and taxes as in a standard...

captures between 48 and 93 percent of the post-WWII baby boom.

and that the derivative at the balanced growth equilibrium can be computed analytically from the primitives of the model.

We build a business cycle model where employers' screening of heterogeneous workers plays a central role in determining both the flows into and out of unemployment. The model can address how differences between the US and European labor market flows affect business cycle dynamics. It provides a...

This paper presents and estimates a sticky-price model with heterogeneous households and financial frictions. Frictions in state-contingent asset markets lead to imperfect risk-sharing among households with idiosyncratic labor incomes. I study the impacts of the introduced …financial frictions...

We develop a dynamic politico-economic model of public investment where decisions can be made at several levels of government: federal, state, or county. The model predicts that in the absence of internal mobility, the higher level of government would fund all investments that present positive...

We explore how developmental and regulatory impediments to resource reallocation limit the ability of developing countries to adopt technologies: an efficient economy quickly innovates; but when the economy is unable to fully use resources liberated by closing firms, or when policy distortions...