The objective of this paper is to provide a theoretical explanation to some puzzling facts. While among American residents women, Mexicans tend to have higher fertility rates - a total fertility rate (TFR) of about 2.7 as opposed to a TFR of US born women of 2.0 - the fertility rate of Mexicans...

We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher...

We quantitatively investigate the capacity to collect revenue when the government is constrained to use non-linear (progressive) income taxes. We develop a life-cycle growth model with individual heterogeneity and endogenous labor supply, and explore the degree of tax progressivity that can be...

We present new data documenting medieval Europe's "Commercial Revolution" using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germany's first...

We estimate the full model using Bayesian methods and allow for both determinate and indeterminate equilibria. Our estimates of the resulting equilibria during the Great Inflation of the 1970s reveal that the Fed’s optimal policy response was seen by the private sector as leading to an...

This paper develops a methodology for predicting the impact of trade liberalization on exports by industry (2-digit ISIC) based on the distribution of exports before the reform by product (5-digit SITC). Using the results of Kehoe and Ruhl (2009) that much of the growth in trade after trade...

This paper studies health insurance over the life-cycle with adverse selection to analyze the welfare implications of the Aordable Care Act of 2010 that targets at improving the access to health insurance for the uninsured. For this purpose, this study develops a life-cycle model following...

This paper examines the effects of changes in uncertainty of household income on the macroeconomy. Households face substantial idiosyncratic income risk that is up to two orders of magnitude larger than total factor productivity uncertainty, very persistent and varies substantially over the...

The paper studies the design of optimal fiscal rules for members of a monetary union when there are privately observed shocks to countries’ social cost of domestic taxation. First, I show that optimal fiscal rules prescribe policy coordination in the sense of domestic taxation efforts...

We exploit policy discontinuity at U.S. state borders to identify the effects of unemployment insurance policies on unemployment. We find large effects of unemployment benefit extensions on unemployment. In fact, the estimates imply that most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the...