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...

This paper provides estimates of the average returns to labour market experience and .rm-speci.c tenure for a sample of young Italian male workers. Using instrumental variables, I take into account endogeneity and selection problems generated by job matching and individual fixed effects. Results...

In this paper, I look at the interaction between social learning and cooperative behavior. I model this using a social dilemma game with publicly observed sequential actions and asymmetric information about payoffs. I find that some informed agents in this model act, individually and without...

The human tendency to cooperate with nonkin even in short-run relationships remains a puzzle. Recently it has been hypothesized that altruism may be a byproduct of “mentalizing”, the process of understanding and predicting the mental states of others. Another idea is based on sexual...

In a market in which sellers compete by posting mechanisms, we study how the properties of the meeting technology affect the mechanism that sellers select. In general, sellers have incentive to use mechanisms that are socially efficient. In our environment, sellers achieve this by posting an...

In many markets, sellers advertise their good with an asking price. This is a price at which the seller will take his good off the market and trade immediately, though it is understood that a buyer can submit an offer below the asking price and that this offer may be accepted if the seller...