Default risk models have been widely employed to assess the ability of households and sovereigns to insure themselves against shocks. Grid search has often been used to solve these models because the complexity of the problem prevents the use of faster but less general methods. In this paper, we...

How do defaults and bankruptcies affect optimal health insurance policy? I answer this question,using a life-cycle model of health investment with an option to default on emergency room(ER) bills and financial debts. I calibrate the model to the U.S. economy and compare the optimalhealth...

The heterogeneity of businesses and households impacts aggregate economic fluctuations and, in turn, is shaped by aggregate fluctuations. This view has emerged over the last decade with strong implications for the transmission and conduct of monetary policy. Our thematic review focuses on key...

Do economic resources make a territory more desirable for conquest? I argue that contrary to conventional wisdom, certain types of economic resources can make states less willing to claim a territory. The presence of capital-intensive resources in a territory, such as oil or minerals, raises...

How should we compare welfare across pension systems in presence of differential mortality? A commonly used standard utilitarian criterion implicitly favors the long-lived over the short-lived. We investigate under what conditions this ranking is reversed. We clearly distinguish between the...

How and to what extent does the optimality of Universal Basic Income (UBI) depend on itstime inconsistency? I address these questions in an incomplete-markets economy by characterizingand solving for the equilibria of a dynamic game between individuals and a benevolentgovernment according to its...