We compare the cost effectiveness of two pronatalist policies: (a) child allowances; and (b) daycare subsidies. We pay special attention to estimating how intended fertility (fertility before children are born) responds to these policies. We use two evaluation tools: (i) a dynamic model on...

US data and new stockholding data from fifteen European countries and China exhibit a common pattern: stockholding shares increase in household income and wealth. Yet, there is a multitude of numbers to match through models. Using a single utility function across households (parsimony), we...

After the Lehman-Brothers collapse, the stock index has exceeded its pre-Lehman-Brothers peak by 36% in real terms. Seemingly, markets have been demanding more stocks instead of bonds. Yet, instead of observing higher bond rates, paradoxically, bond rates have been persistently negative after...

Following the introduction of the one-child policy in China, the capital-labor (K/L) ratio of China increased relative to that of India, and, simultaneously, FDI inflows relative to GDP for China versus India declined. These observations are explained in the context of a simple neoclassical OLG...

The modern financial system features complicated financial intermediation chains, with each layer performing a certain degree of credit/maturity transformation. We develop a dynamic model in which an entrepreneur borrows from overlapping-generation households via layers of funds, forming a...

In fifteen European countries, China, and the US, stocks and business equity as a share of total household assets are represented by an increasing and convex function of income/wealth. A parsimonious model fitted to the data shows why background labor-income risk can explain much of this...

We argue that a common practice of evaluating portfolio managers relative to a benchmark has real effects. Benchmarking generates additional, inelastic demand for assets inside the benchmark. This leads to a "benchmark inclusion subsidy:" a firm inside the benchmark values an investment project...

We propose a model of asset management in which benchmarking arises endogenously, and analyze its unintended welfare consequences. Fund managers' portfolios are unobservable and they incur private costs in running them. Conditioning managers' compensation on a benchmark portfolio's performance...

Lucas (1990) argues that the neoclassical adjustment process fails to explain the relative paucity of FDI inflows from rich to poor countries. In this paper we consider a natural experiment: using China as the treated country and India as the control, we show that the dynamics of the relative...

Recently, many U.S. employers have adopted less generous prescription drug benefits. In addition, the U.S. began to offer prescription drug insurance to approximately 42 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2006. We use data on individual health insurance claims and benefit data from 1997-2003 to...