The paper develops a simple two-period model relating child labor, child school attendance and child health care access in LDCs showing that child labor is positively correlated to access to health care services. In fact, higher medical expenditure generates better health and, therefore, higher...

In this paper we present an extensive analysis of the consequences for global equilibrium determinacy in flexible-price open economies of implementing active interest rate rules, i.e., monetary rules where the nominal interest rate responds more than proportionally to changes in inflation. We...

We study the interplay of probabilistic sophistication, second order stochastic dominance, and uncertainty aversion, three fundamental notions in choice under uncertainty. In particular, our main result, Theorem 2, characterizes uncertainty averse preferences that satisfy second order stochastic...

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spending as antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we present an alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in their information about the economic situation,...

Using a clock model of a multi-unit, oral, ascending-price auction, within the commonvalue paradigm, we analyse the asymptotic behaviour of the transaction price as the number of bidders gets large. We find that even though the transaction price is determined by a (potentially small) fraction of...

The recent financial crisis, alongside a dramatic rise in unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic, suggests that financial shocks do translate into the labour markets. In this paper we first present and review the basic facts on unemployment dynamics, financial shocks and Okun's elasticity...

A large body of empirical literature indicates that, contrary to predictions from economic theory, wages in the informal sector increase after a minimum wage hike. This phenomenon was so far explained as a byproduct of a signal (a lighthouse) conveyed by statutory minima to wage setting in the...

Little is known about the effects of revealing information on relative performance during a dynamic tournament. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on risk taking and performance using data on professionals competing in tournaments for large rewards. As our data allows us to observe...

In all European countries, emergency policy measures have been introduced in order to counteract the employment consequences of the economic crisis. In the context of variously composed anticrisis packages, many European countries have used Short-Time Work (STW) schemes, that is measures to...

The empirical literature on the cost structure of multiproduct firms (e.g., public utilities providing in combination gas, water, and electricity) traditionally assumes a common technology across different products and stages of production, letting the issue of poolability unexplored. The...