This paper is a quantitative, equilibrium study of the insurance role of severance pay when workers face displacement risk and markets are incomplete. A key feature of our model is that, in line with an established empirical literature, job displacement entails a persistent fall in earnings upon...

This paper considers the macroeconomic implications of a se t of empirical studies finding a high degree of dispersion in preference heterogeneity. It develops a model with risk aversion heterogeneity, uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk, and self-selection into risky jobs to quantify their...

This paper studies the effect of hard drugs addiction on property crimes and hard drugs selling in the US. A dynamic equilibrium model quantifying how much of the observed property crime rate is accounted for by hard drugs addiction is specified and estimated. The model is framed in both a...

We study how the heterogeneity of information impacts the efficiency of the business cycle and the design of optimal fiscal and monetary policy. We do so within a model that features a standard Dixit-Stiglitz demand structure, introduces dispersed private information about the underlying...

This paper extends Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) by introducing workers' risk aversion. In doing so, it provides a framework within which to study jointly the optimal supply of job security and the allocational and welfare consequences of government intervention in excess of private...

This paper extends Carroll's (2006) endogenous grid method and its combination with value function iteration by Barillas and Fernandez-Villaverde (2007) to non-concave problems. The method is illustrated using a non-concave consumer problem in which consumers choose both durable and non-durable...

This paper measures mismatch between job-seekers and vacancies in the U.S. labor market. Mismatch is defined as the distance between the observed allocation of unemployed workers across sectors and the optimal allocation that solves a planner’s problem. The planner’s allocation...

The wealthy hand-to-mouth are households who hold little or no liquid wealth (e.g. cash, checking, and saving accounts), despite owning sizable amounts of illiquid assets (i.e., assets that carry a transaction cost, such as housing, large durables, or retirement accounts). This portfolio...

We explore the optimal progressivity of the income tax system in an incomplete-markets model. Agents value private and public consumption and leisure, and are heterogeneous with respect to innate ability, idiosyncratic shock histories, and preferences. This heterogeneity generates a potential...

This paper extends the recent recursive contract literature on optimal unemployment insurance and optimal welfare-to-work programs in order to study the constrained-efficient dynamic contract between government and unemployed worker when a costly "training technology" is available. We first...