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Working Paper
Reconciling consumption inequality with income inequality
The rise in within-group consumption inequality in response to the increase in within-group income inequality over the last three decades in the U.S. is puzzling to expected-utility-based incomplete market models. The two-sided lack of commitment models exhibit too little consumption inequality while the standard incomplete markets models tend to predict too much consumption inequality. We show that a model with two-sided lack of commitment and chance attitudes, as emphasized by prospect theory, can explain the relationship and can avoid the systematic bias of the expected utility models. The ...
Journal Article
Government investment and the European stability and growth pact
The authors analyze whether it makes sense to treat public investment spending differently from other government spending when applying the deficit constraints mandated within the single European currency area. Given the low rates of population growth, mobility, and mortality in European countries, they find that excluding public investment from the computation of the deficit ceiling has only moderate implications for the current generations? spending choices. They also show that excluding net investment yields better outcomes than excluding gross investment.