We investigate the welfare effects of eliminating business cycles in a model with substantial consumer heterogeneity. The heterogeneity arises from uninsurable and idiosyncratic uncertainty in preferences and employment status. We calibrate the model to match the distribution of wealth in U.S....

We study a political economy model of entry barriers. Each period the policymaker determines whether to impose a high barrier to entry, and the special interest groups try to influence the policymaker's decision. Entry is accompanied by creative destruction - when many new firms enter, old firms...

This paper employs a dynamic general equilibrium model to design and evaluate long-term unemployment insurance plans (plans that depend on workers' unemployment history) in economies with and without hidden savings. We show that optimal benefit schemes and welfare implications differ...

(Copyright: Elsevier)

We investigate the welfare effects of eliminating business cycles in a model with substantial consumer heterogeneity. The heterogeneity arises from uninsurable and idiosyncratic uncertainty in preferences and employment, where regarding employment, we distinguish among employment and short- and...

This paper documents the large differences in hours of work across OECD countries and shows how these differences have evolved over time. It argues that changes in technology and government can potentially account for the broad patterns of change. (Copyright: Elsevier)

This paper studies lifetime aggregate labor supply with endogenous workweek length. Such a theory is needed to evaluate various government policies. A key feature of our model is a nonlinear mapping from hours worked to labor services. This gives rise to an endogenous workweek that can differ...

Agriculture's share of economic activity is known to vary inversely with a country's level of development. This paper examines whether extensions of the neoclassical growth model can account for some important sectoral patterns observed in a current cross-section of countries and in the time...

We formulate a version of the growth model in which production is carried out by heterogeneous establishments and calibrate it to U.S. data. In the context of this model we argue that differences in the allocation of resources across establishments that differ in productivity may be an important...

This paper extends the Lucas-Prescott island economy to allow for finite lived agents and sector specific human capital. Unlike the Lucas-Prescott model in which workers who leave declining sectors find employment in expanding sectors, this models predicts that workers who leave declining...