Micro data over the life cycle show different patterns for consumption for housing and non-housing goods: The consumption profile of non-housing goods is hump-shaped, while the consumption profile for housing first increases monotonically and then flattens out. These patterns hold true at each...

Using data from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances, the authors examine characteristics of entrepreneurs and the businesses they run. Their analysis confirms that business owners are important sources of saving and wealth creation in the U.S. and that they are less risk...

Households hold vastly heterogeneous amounts of wealth when they reach retirement, and differences in lifetime earnings explain only part of this variation. This paper studies the role of intergenerational transmission of ability, voluntary bequest motives, and the recipiency of accidental and...

Households hold vastly heterogenous amounts of wealth when they reach retirement, and differences in lifetime earnings explain only part of this variation. This paper studies the role of intergenerational transmission of ability, voluntary bequest motives, and the recipiency of accidental and...

This paper provides two main contributions. First, it provides a new theory of wealth inequality that merges two forces generating inequality: bequest motives and inheritance of ability across generations; and an earnings process that allows for more earnings risk for the richest. Second, it...

A major threat to Hawaii's ecosystem is the spread of invasive plant species. One such species is Miconia calvescens. Given that this plant was originally introduced to Hawaii by the horticulture industry and has negative effects on agricultural productivity, it is logical to find the farm...

We estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle housing and nonhousing con- sumption in the presence of labor income and house price uncertainties. The model postulates constant elasticity of substitution between housing service and nonhousing consumption, and explicitly incorporates a...

We reexamine the empirical relevance of habit formation preferences with micro-data on households' portfolio choices. We first derive the analytical solution to the risky asset share in a theoretical model with both habits and time-varying labor income. Our analytical results indicate that (1)...

In this article, we explore whether relative risk aversion varies with wealth. First, we derive theoretical predictions on how risky shares respond to wealth uctuations in a portfolio choice model with both external habits and time-varying labor income. Our analytical results indicate that: (1)...

We document trends in higher education costs and tuition over the past 50 years. To explain these trends, we develop and simulate a general equilibrium model with unbalanced technical change. We assume that higher education suffers from Baumol's (1967) service sector disease, in that the...