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Working Paper
On the Benefits of Currency Reform
Money allows agents to achieve allocations that are not possible without it. How- ever, currency in most economies is a uniform object, and there may be incentive compatible allocations that cannot be implemented with a uniform currency. We show that currency reform, ie, changing the monetary base by replacing one currency with another, is a powerful tool that can enable a planner to achieve his desired allocation. Our monetary mechanism with currency reform is anonymous and features nonlinear pricing of consumption goods and future assets, as observed in practice. Our result suggests that ...
Why Do Women Outnumber Men in College Enrollment?
Women appear to have a relatively higher financial return to college education than men, who have access to lucrative careers that require only a high school diploma.
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
We study optimal insurance contracts for an agent with Markovian private information. Our main results characterize the implications of constrained efficiency for long-run welfare and inequality. Under minimal technical conditions, there is Absolute Immiseration: in the long run, the agent?s consumption and utility converge to their lower bounds. When types are persistent and utility is unbounded below, there is Relative Immiseration: low-type agents are immiserated at a faster rate than high-type agents, and ?pathwise welfare inequality? grows without bound. These results extend and ...
The Pandemic’s Influence on U.S. Fertility Rates
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a negative impact on fertility for U.S. women ages 30-34, though birth rates did increase among women ages 20-24.
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
This paper studies the optimal tradeoff between insurance and inequality in economies with persistent private information.We consider a principal-agent model in which the principal insures the agent against privately-observed shocks to his endowment, which follows an ergodic finite-state Markov chain that may exhibit arbitrary serial correlation. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility become arbitrarily negative in the long run. When the endowment is positively serially correlated, the optimal contract provides increasingly high-powered ...
Analyzing How Students Pick Which College to Attend
Research Officer Oksana Leukhina discusses her economic research on the college selection process.
The Household Shift from Paid Work to Home Production
When U.S. workers lose their jobs or have reduced work hours, how does this affect time spent on activities like cooking and child care?
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...
Journal Article
Home Production Activity during the COVID-19 Shutdown
An increase in household activities—including child care and cooking—between January and April coincides with job losses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...