Acknowledging that wage inequality and intergenerational mobility are strongly interrelated, this paper presents a model in which both are jointly determined. The model enables us to study how inequality and mobility are affected by exogenous changes and what determines their correlation. A main...

We show that volatility of household consumption, after accounting for predictable variation arising from movements in real interest rates, preferences and income shocks, increased between 1970 and 2002. For single parent households, and households headed by nonwhite or poorly educated...

Fictitious play and "gradient" learning are examined in the context of a large population where agents are repeatedly randomly matched. We show that the aggregation of this learning behaviour can be qualitatively different from learning at the level of the individual. This aggregate dynamic...

We study how the presence of multiple participation opportunities coupled with individual learning about payoff affects the ability of agents to coordinate efficiently in global coordination games. Two players face the option to invest irreversibly in a project in one of many rounds. The project...

In this chapter, we described a Bayesian approach to efficiency analysis using stochastic frontier models. With cross-sectional data and a log-linear frontier, a simple Gibbs sampler can be used to carry out Bayesian inference. In the case of a nonlinear frontier, more complicated posterior...

We characterize the steady state of a market with random matching and bargaining, where the sellers' goods can perish overnight. Generally, the quantity traded is suboptimal, prices are dispersed and their is a dead-weight loss caused by excess supply or demand. In the limit, as the cost of...

If individuals care about their status, defined as their rank in the distribution of consumption of one “positional” good, then the consumer’s problem is strategic as her utility depends on the consumption choices of others. In the symmetric Nash equilibrium, each individual spends an...

This paper investigates fund-raising mechanisms based on a prize as a way to overcome free riding in the private provision of public goods, under the assumptions of income heterogeneity and incomplete information about income levels. We compare experimentally the performance of a lottery, an...

Players repeatedly face a coordination problem in a dynamic global game. By choosing a risky action (invest) instead of waiting, players risk instantaneous losses as well as a loss of payoffs from future stages, in which they cannot participate if they go bankrupt. Thus, the total strategic risk...