Since a mysterious creator under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) launched first successful cryptocurrency in January 2009, he (or could be she) also opened the door for never-ending criticism, claims, arguments, plethora of articles, and media frenzy all contemplating what Bitcoin is....

This book explores the past, present, and future of the Internet. It explains why some crucial, commonplace ingredients of the Net such as the generic, reprogrammable PC are likely soon to be replaced, not just complemented, by a new range of information appliances and corresponding Web 2.0...

We develop an overlapping generations model where consumption is the source of polluting emissions. Pollution stock accumulates with emissions but is partially assimilated by nature at each period. The assimilation capacity of nature is limited and vanishes beyond a critical level of pollution....

This paper models the effect of a HIV/AIDS epidemic on saving behavior and studies the welfare effects of testing for HIV. The model specifies a utility function that includes both regular consumption, and medical expenditures. Medical expenditures generate more utility if individuals are HIV...

The paper studies the effects of cross-country differences in the production process of human capital on income distribution and growth. Our overlapping generations economy has the following features: (1)consumers are heterogenous with respect to parental education and wealth;...

It has been well-documented that beliefs and actions can be affected by media coverage. In this paper, I investigate a case of this phenomenon where coverage of a large social problem – climate change – could create a potentially large social benefit – reduction of carbon emissions....

In this paper, we argue that time-inconsistent preferences in financial decision-making are sensitive to the kind of prospection involved. Given that episodic prospection increases the subjective importance of a future reward (Benoit, Gilbert and Burgess, 2011), we expect that this human faculty...

A large body of microeconomic evidence supports Friedman (1957)'s proposition that household income can be reasonably well described as having both transitory and permanent components. We show how to modify the widely-used macroeconomic model of Krusell and Smith (1998) to accommodate such a...

We study how unemployment affects the over-indebtedness of households using the new European Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). First, we assess the role of different labor market statuses (i.e. employed, unemployed, disabled, retired, etc.) and other household characteristics...

This paper describes how behavioral elements are relevant to financial supervision,regulation, and central banking. It focuses on (1) behavioral effects of norms (social, legal,and market); (2) behavior of others (internalization, identification, and compliance); and(3) psychological biases. It...