Transparent disclosures of public information might be one natural policy to reduce information inequality among individuals. We conduct a welfare analysis of such policy by introducing ex-ante heterogeneity in individuals' private information in a class of economies with dispersed information...

Having a formal understanding of what various institutions represent should be important. There are few economic variables which can accumulate over time (and give us what i call as "state utility"). All these institutions, like education, health, social (like caste system, dowry etc.), do is...

The idea that information frictions amplify business cycles is hard to evaluate because information is not easily measured. We propose a quantifiable information friction that amplifies output fluctuations. In our simple model of decentralized trade, income dispersion measures uncertainty about...

This paper examines the political economy of redistribution when voters have asymmetric information about the redistributive preferences of politicians and the latter cannot make credible policy commitments. The candidates in each party are endogenously selected by a process of Nash Bargaining...

Over the last 30 years in the U.S., less educated workers have experienced a sharp decline in health insurance coverage rate and stagnant wage growth. In contrast, more educated workers' health insurance coverage rate has stayed relatively stable and their wages have rapidly grown. This paper...

Over the last 30 years in the U.S., less educated workers have experienced a sharp decline in health insurance coverage rate and stagnant wage growth. In contrast, more educated workers' health insurance coverage rate has stayed relatively stable and their wages have rapidly grown. This paper...

In signaling games, prejudice occurs if an employer pre-judges some applicants without information and dismisses their signals based on irrelevant characteristics like race. When signaling is inefficient, competition among applicants lowers their signaling incentives and the quality of signals...

We evaluate a temporary public sector employment program targeted at individuals with weak labor market attachment, applying dynamic inverse probability weighting to account for dynamic selection. We show that the program is successful in increasing employment and reducing social assistance....