Consumption is more volatile than output in developing countries while it is less volatile than output in developed economies. This paper shows that the relatively large home sector in developing economies contributes to this difference, and the driving force for this difference is technology....

In this paper we consider a general equilibrium model where heterogeneous agents specialize either in legitimate market activities or in criminal activities and majority rule determines the share of income redistributed and the expenditures devoted to the apprehension of criminals. We calibrate...

We study the optimal auditing of a taxpayer’s income in a dynamic principal-agent model of hidden income. Taxpayers in our model initially have low income and stochastically transit to high income that is an absorbing state. A low-income taxpayer who transits to high income can under-report...

This thesis applies mechanism design to explore the roles of outside and inside money in achieving optimal allocations. Two chapters use settings that are related to random-matching models. The third uses an overlapping generations setting. In all three, a critical role is played by assumptions...