We study the determinants of differences in farm-size across countries and their impact on agricultural and aggregate productivity using a quantitative sectoral model featuring a distribution of farms. Measured aggregate factors (capital, land, economy-wide productivity) account for ? of the...

Recent empirical evidence from the United States indicates a high degree of persistence in earnings across generations. Designing effective public policies to increase social mobility requires identifying and measuring the major sources of persistence and inequality in earnings. We provide a...

We assess the empirical importance of changes in income and relative prices for structural transformation in the postwar United States. We explain two natural approaches to the data: sectors may be categories of final expenditure or value added; e.g., the service sector may be the final expenditure...

Many states are implementing school-finance reforms which will have complex effects on income distribution, intergenerational income mobility, and welfare. This paper analyzes the static and dynamic effects of such reforms by constructing a dynamic general equilibrium model of public-education...

We construct a family model of labor supply that features adjustment along both the intensive and extensive margin. Intensive margin adjsutment is restricted to two values: full-time work and part-time work. Using simulated data from the steady state of the calibrated model, we examine whether...

We consider two life cycle models of labor supply that use nonconvexities to generate retirement. In each case we derive a link between hours worked prior to retirement, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution for labor (IES), and the size of the nonconvexities. This link is robust to...