In this paper, we discuss bequests and other intergenerational transfers and what impact they have on the consumption, saving, and labor supply behavior of households. We show that bequests and other intergenerational transfers are prevalent in most countries, that they are sometimes motivated...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic life-cycle model to quantify why households save and work. The model incorporates multiple sources of risk--health, marital status, wages, medical expenses, and mortality--as well as endogenous labor supply and human capital accumulation, retirement,...

This paper shows that global capital markets cannot, by themselves, achieve net transfers of financial capital between countries and that both the integration of global financial markets as well as the integration of global goods markets are needed to achieve net transfers of capital between...

A longstanding literature highlights the tension between the altruism of physicians and their desire for profit. We develop new implications for how these competing forces determine pricing and utilization. Altruism encourages providers to reduce utilization in response to higher prices, but...

Invariably across a cross-section of countries and time periods, wealth distributions are skewed to the right displaying thick upper tails, that is, large and slowly declining top wealth shares. In this survey we categorize the theoretical studies on the distribution of wealth in terms of the...

Obstfeld and Rogoff (2001) propose that trade frictions lie behind key puzzles in international macroeconomics. We take a dynamic multicountry model of international trade, production, and investment to data from 19 countries to assess this proposition quantitatively. Using the framework...