This paper uses data on house transactions in the state of Massachusetts over the last 20 years to show that houses sold after foreclosure, or close in time to the death or bankruptcy of at least one seller, are sold at lower prices than other houses. Foreclosure discounts are particularly large...

In many affine asset pricing models, the innovation to the pricing kernel is a function of innovations to current and expected future values of an economic state variable, often consumption growth, aggregate market returns, or short-term interest rates. The impulse response of the priced state...

In affine asset pricing models, the innovation to the pricing kernel is a function of innovations to current and expected future values of an economic state variable, for example consumption growth, aggregate market returns, or short-term interest rates. The impulse response of this priced...

We study an agent who is unsure of the dynamics of consumption growth. She estimates her consumption process non-parametrically to place minimal restrictions on dynamics. We analytically show that the worst-case model that she uses for pricing, given a penalty on deviations from the point...

This paper is about the role of policy, institutions, and culture in creating a strong negative tradeoff between productivity and employment growth across groups of countries within Europe. Throughout the postwar era until 1995 labor productivity grew faster in Europe than in the United States....

A basic tenet of economic science is that productivity growth is the source of growth in real income per capita. But our results raise doubts by creating a direct link between macro productivity growth and the micro evolution of the income distribution. We show that over the entire period...

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of seven aspects of rising inequality that are usually discussed separately: changes in labor's share of income; inequality at the bottom of the income distribution, including labor mobility; skill-biased technical change; inequality among high incomes;...

Starting from the standard Gordon inflation model, which explains price changes by inertia, demand shocks, and supply shocks but excludes wages, the first part of this paper returns wages to the analysis by developing a model that includes both price and wage equations. The model allows for...

Throughout the postwar era until 1995 labor productivity grew faster in Europe than in the United States. Since 1995, productivity growth in the EU-15 has slowed while that in the United States has accelerated. But Europe's productivity growth slowdown was largely offset by faster growth in...