Knowledge that Transforms

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Currently, casinos and bookies use the point-spread method for betting on football games. Since an odds system is used in various other sports, what factors explain the current structure of the betting market? As the bookie's profits are a percentage of the total money wagered, the existence of point-spread betting indicates that the total money wagered under this betting scheme is greater than that generated by odds betting. This paper suggets that the current market structure is a consequence of risk-averse attitudes of bettors.

We develop an overlapping-generations model of endogenous growth in which human capital is the engine of growth and the generations are linked through material and emotional interdependencies within the family. Parents invest in their children to achieve both old-age support (care) and emotional gratification, and material support from children is determined through self-enforcing implicit contracts. We show that optimal intergenerational trade can then lead to maximization of growth opportunities. Our model produces a theory of the "demographic transition" linking longevity, fertility, and economic growth. We also show that while population aging may raise the growth rate, an increase in young-age longevity is likely to produce a greater increase in the growth rate and a reduction in the fertility rate in a growth equilibrium. These predictions and the model's implications concerning the behavior of private savings during the takeoff period appear consistent with empirical evidence.

We analyze the efficiency and market equilibirum effects of endogenous categorization, where insurance companies classify risks on the basis of insureds' voluntary consumption of products that are correlated with underlying loss propersities, and we show that the use of such categorization may permit the attainment of first-best allocations as competitive Nash equilibria. The optimal insurance premium involves a trade-off between the use of categorization to correct moral hazard externalities generated by the consumption of the product and the use of differential consumption to sort heterogeneous consumers, thereby mitigating the social costs of adverse selection. The efficiency consequences of taxing or subsidizing aggregate, as opposed to individual, consumption is also considered.

We reconsider the paradox that the variance of production often exceeds the variance of shipments, a result that casts doubt on the production smoothing model of inventory behavior. Most studies of production smoothing have analyzed two-digit SIC dollar-value data from Commerce Department surveys. In contrast, this paper examines disaggregated physical-product data and finds that production is smoother than shipments in about two-thirds of the 38 industry or product groupings considered. However, doubts about the model persist; most notably, Euler equation estimates of the model's cost parameters are usually imprecise and often do not have the signs postulated by production smoothing models.

Monetary models based on cash-in-advance constraints make strong predictions about the stochastic properties of endogeneous variables such as the velocity of circulation of money, the rate of inflation, and real and nominal interest rates. We develop numerical methods to understand these predictions because the models cannot be characterized analytically. We calibrate some cash-in-advance models using driving processes estimated from U. S. time-series data to generate model predictions that are compared to sample statistics. Formulations of the models that generate variability in velocity corresponding to the U.S. data typically fail along other dimensions.

On the basis of anthropologists' area-specific research of primogeniture, I propose a Becker-Barro type of dynastic model in which primogeniture may emerge as family heads' optimal policy to minimize their respective lineal extinction probability. I show that parents' bequest division will be affected by the intrinsic mobility structure of the society, contrary to previous causality conjecture. Although an unequal division of bequests widens the within-generation inequality, it may increase the intergenerational upward mobility for the well-endowed child, which in turn improves the originally rigid upward mobility of the poor and middle-income groups and, as a result, reduces the steady-state income inequality.

Intertemporal separability is an almost universal assumption in empirical work on household behavior, but a good deal of recent work on consumption and labor supply suggests that it may not be tenable. The traditional weakening of this assumption is to allow for habit formation. I propose an alternative structure for intertemporal preferences that nests intertemporal additivity in a simple way and yields closed-form solutions for demand functions. This structure includes the neoclassical durables model as a special case. I derive a demand system that nests the almost ideal system as its time-separable counterpart. This model is estimated on U.K. aggregate time-series data for seven goods. Time separability is decisively rejected. Moreover, I find that ignoring temporal dependencies leads to considerable bias in the estimates of elasticities. Of the seven goods, durables display the strongest nonseparable effect; the estimated reactions are consistent with the neoclassical durables model.

How should a seller price capacity that has no salvage value to heterogeneous customers whose valuations are private information? There are two periods, and the seller cannot precommit to prices in the later period. One option is price discrimination: first price high, then discount later if excess capacity remains. By offering most-favored-customer protection, the seller can charge more in advance but will leave capacity unsold with positive probability. She favors the MFC protection when capacity is large and leans toward price discrimination when customers are more uncertain about the degree of excess demand in the first period.

The self-screening properties of initial eligibility determination, a mechanism often under the control of the administrators of targeted transfer programs, are derived and the use of this mechanism in the social security disability insurance system is explored empirically. An increase in the rigor of initial eligibility screening may discourage potential applicants because they are unaware of appeal prospects and because the eligibility decision delay is lengthened, as denied applicants are forced to appeal their claims. In the disability program, a 10 percent increase in the initial denial rate induces a 4 percent decrease in applications. Self-selection is nonperverse.