This dissertation explores the interactions between resource reallocation, productivity dynamics and business cycles. A theory that combines two driving forces for resource reallocation, learning and creative destruction, is presented to reconcile several empirical findings of gross job flows....

State and local governments invested 13% of their revenues on infrastructure in 2002, but existing literature provides only mixed evidence that infrastructure contributes to economic activity. To estimate the effect of infrastructure on the economy, Chapter 1 analyzes how the construction of the...

This dissertation consists of three chapters studying different issues related to self-employment and entrepreneurship. The first chapter studies the effects of labor market frictions and credit constraints in an economy with self-employment. Two types of self-employed workers emerge in the...

Recent estimates of the intergenerational correlation of income in the United States are centered around 0.6. Existing empirical work is only able to explain about half of this correlation. The first chapter of this dissertation provides a behavioral explanation that accounts for almost half of...

In this dissertation, we analyze some patterns of aggregate job reallocation that are significantly determined by the coexistence of heterogeneous businesses in any industry. First, we argue that the interaction of non-strictly convex adjustment costs and learning about true efficiency can...

In this dissertation, I further explore the role of the entrepreneurial sector in creating frictions in the economy. I examine the combined effect of private information and entrepreneurial risk aversion on the dynamics of a general equilibrium macroeconomic model. I analyze the impact of these...

Spatial econometrics is a subfield of econometrics that deals with the treatment of spatialinteractions in regression models for cross sectional and panel data.Chapter 1: This is the first paper that highlights the role of spatial interactions, in thecontext of bankruptcy laws, in the...

Castro and Coen-Pirani (2008) document that aggregate skilled hours and employment both became more volatile after the mid-1980s, in contrast to the simultaneous volatility decline of most aggregates, including overall hours and employment and unskilled hours and employment. In chapter 1, I...

Market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies. These combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the...

We develop a methodology for testing Hick's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the...