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Jel Classification:D52 

Working Paper
Preventive vs. Curative Medicine: A Macroeconomic Analysis of Health Care over the Life Cycle

This paper studies differences in health care usage and health outcomes between low- and high-income individuals. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) I find that early in life the rich spend significantly more on health care, whereas from midway through life until very old age the medical spending of the poor dramatically exceeds that of the rich. In addition, low-income individuals are less likely to incur any medical expenditures in a given year, yet, when they do incur medical expenditures, the amounts are more likely to be extreme. To account for these facts, I ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-025

Working Paper
The Piketty Transition

We study the effects on inequality of a "Piketty transition" to zero growth. In a model with a worker-capitalist dichotomy, we show first that the relationship between inequality (measured as a ratio of incomes for the two types) and growth is complicated; zero growth can raise or lower inequality, depending on parameters. Extending our model to include idiosyncratic wage risk we show that growth has quantitatively negligible effects on inequality, and the effect is negative. Finally, following Piketty?s thought experiment, we study how the transition might occur without declining returns; ...
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1432

Working Paper
How Small is Small? Non-linearities in Heterogeneous Agent Models

In plausibly calibrated heterogeneous-agent models, marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) are highly non-linear in wealth, falling sharply away from borrowing constraints. As a result, the aggregate consumption response to a fiscal transfer is strongly concave in its size: larger transfers shift households out of high-MPC regions, dampening the consumption response. Across partial- and general-equilibrium settings, linear methods substantially overstate the effects of fiscal stimulus at empirically relevant sizes. Local methods of any order are unlikely to be reliable in settings where a ...
Working Papers , Paper 815

Working Paper
Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy

We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finance and Survey of Income Program Participation to show that young households with children are under-insured against the risk that an adult member of the household dies. We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with human capital risk, age-dependent returns to human capital investment, and endogenous borrowing constraints due to the limited pledgeability of human capital (limited contract enforcement). We show analytically that, consistent with the life insurance data, in equilibrium young households are borrowing constrained and under-insured ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2014-9

Working Paper
International financial integration and crisis contagion

International financial integration helps to diversify risk but also may increase the transmission of crises across countries. We provide a quantitative analysis of this trade-off in a two-country general equilibrium model with endogenous portfolio choice and collateral constraints. Collateral constraints bind occasionally, depending upon the state of the economy and levels of inherited debt. The analysis allows for different degrees of financial integration, moving from financial autarky to bond market integration and equity market integration. Financial integration leads to a significant ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 197

Working Paper
Preventive vs. Curative Medicine: A Macroeconomic Analysis of Health Care over the Life Cycle

This paper studies differences in health care usage and health outcomes between low- and high-income individuals. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) I find that early in life the rich spend significantly more on health care, whereas from middle to very old age medical spending of the poor surpasses that of the rich by 25%. In addition, low-income individuals are less likely to incur any medical expenditures in a given year, yet, when they do, their expenses are more likely to be extreme. To account for these facts, I develop and estimate a life-cycle model of two ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-025

Working Paper
Constrained inefficiency and optimal taxation with uninsurable risks

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so, how? In a two-period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and distribution effects. This method allows us to determine how the sign of the optimal taxes on capital and labor depends on the nature of the shocks, the degree of heterogeneity among consumers' income, and the way in which the tax revenue is used to provide lump sum transfers to consumers. When shocks ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2014-25

Report
Discrete Choice, Complete Markets, and Equilibrium

This paper characterizes the allocations that emerge in general equilibrium economies populated by households with preferences of the additive random utility type that make discrete consumption, employment or spatial decisions. We start with a complete markets economy where households can trade claims contingent upon the realizations of their preference shocks. We (i) establish a first and second welfare theorem, (ii) illustrate that in the absence of ex-ante trade, discrete choice economies are generically inefficient, (iii) show that complete markets are not necessary and a much smaller set ...
Staff Report , Paper 656

Working Paper
Mixed Signals: Investment Distortions with Adverse Selection

We study how adverse selection distorts equilibrium investment allocations in a Walrasian credit market with two-sided heterogeneity. Representative investor and partial equilibrium economies are special cases where investment allocations are distorted above perfect information allocations. By contrast, the general setting features a pecuniary externality that leads to trade and investment allocations below perfect information levels. The degree of heterogeneity between informed agents' type governs the direction of the distortion. Moreover, contracts that complete markets dampen the impact ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2019-044

Working Paper
A Comment on 'Wealth Inequality and Endogenous Growth' by Byoungchan Lee

How does wealth inequality affect economic growth? Byoungchan Lee answers this question by developing a heterogeneous-agent model and augmenting it with endogenous firm innovation. The novel channel is that rising wealth concentration reduces aggregate demand, which gives firms a disincentive to spend on R&D and therefore leads to slower productivity growth. In this discussion, we first explain the difference in calibration strategy between Lee’s approach and the common approach in the literature, and then discuss its quantitative implications for the effect of rising inequality on ...
Working Papers , Paper 22-26

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