This paper presents a model economy with endogenous credit constraints and endogenous growth, in which agents face a trade-off between investing resources to improve the pledgeability of collateral assets and the accumulation of human capital. The model generates both growth miracles and...

We examine a theoretical model of liquidity with three assets - money, government bonds and equity - that are used for transaction purposes. Money and bonds complement each other in the payment system. The liquidity of equity is derived as an equilibrium outcome. Liquidity cycles arise from the...

This paper shows that, in a pure currency economy with heterogeneous agents and multiple commodities, a pecuniary externality plays a key role in making the equilibrium allocation constrained inefficient. Monetary policy intervention can help improve matters

We propose a model in which money performs an essential role in the process of exchange, despite the presence of a multilateral clearing house. Agents are assumed to be anonymous and unable to make binding commitments. The clearing house can detect deviations but it cannot identify the...

According to Engineer and Shi (1998, 2001) and Berentsen and Rocheteau (2003), the double coincidence of wants problem seems to be not essential to rationalize the use of money in a search theoretic framework. This paper analyzes an endogenous price each model of money where there is universal...

We argue against the use of composite indices, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), in economic history. We show that the HDI can be interpreted as a formal representation of the analyst’s ethical system. We support our claim by introducing a new class of paternalistic social welfare...

We investigate the effect that seemingly minor features of the implementation of cost-of-living adjustments have on the distribution of household expenditures, by developing an analytical framework that is consistent with standard consumer theory, and mindful of data limitations faced by...

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between drug price and drug quality and how it varies across two of the most common regulatory regimes in the pharmaceutical market: Minimum Efficacy Standards (MES) and Price Controls (PC). We develop a model of adverse selection where a...

The aim of this paper is to study the labor demand in the Italian manufacturing, using firm level data on pharmaceutical industry. The Italian pharmaceutical industry is characterized by the existence of long term labor contracts, and this fact suggests to consider labor as quasi-fixed input. In...

We provide aggregate macroeconomic evidence on how, in the long-run, a diverse degree of complexity in production may affect not only the rate of economic growth, but also the correlation between the latter, population growth and the monopolistic (intermediate) markups. For a sample of OECD...