Using a calibrated general equilibrium overlapping generations model, which explicity accounts for differences between immigrants and natives, this paper investigates whether a reform of immigration policies alone could resolve the fiscal problems associated with the aging of the baby boom generation. Such policies are found to exist and are characterized by an increased inflow of working‐age high‐and medium‐skilled immigrants. One particular feasible policy involves admitting 1.6 million 40–44‐year‐old high‐skilled immigrants annually. These findings are illustrated by computing the discounted government gain of admitting additional immigrants, conditional on their age and skills.

Labour productivity in manufacturing differs starkly across regions in China. We document that productivity, wages, and start-up rates of non-state firms have nevertheless experienced rapid unconditional regional convergence after 1995. To analyse these patterns, we construct a Hopenhayn model that incorporates location-specific capital wedges, output wedges, and entry barriers. Using Chinese Industry Census data, we estimate these wedges and examine their role in explaining differences in performance and growth across prefectures. Entry barriers explain most of the differences. We investigate the empirical covariates of these entry barriers and find that changes in barriers are causally related to changes in the size of the state sector: a smaller state sector leads to lower entry barriers.

This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of fiscal policy in a world comprising a set of small open economies, whose driving force is the intergenerational conflict over debt, taxes, and public goods. Subsequent generations of voters choose fiscal policy through repeated elections. The presence of young voters induces fiscal discipline, that is, low taxes and low debt accumulation. The paper characterizes the Markov-perfect equilibrium of the voting game in each economy, as well as the stationary equilibrium debt distribution and interest rate of the world economy. The equilibrium can reproduce some salient features of fiscal policy in modern economies.

We construct a growth model consistent with China's economic transition: high output growth, sustained returns on capital, reallocation within the manufacturing sector, and a large trade surplus. Entrepreneurial firms use more productive technologies, but due to financial imperfections they must finance investments through internal savings. State-owned firms have low productivity but survive because of better access to credit markets. High-productivity firms outgrow low-productivity firms if entrepreneurs have sufficiently high savings. The downsizing of financially integrated firms forces domestic savings to be invested abroad, generating a foreign surplus. A calibrated version of the theory accounts quantitatively for China's economic transition.

What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. On the other hand, progressivity reduces incentives to work and to invest in skills, distortions that are especially costly when the government must finance public goods. We develop a tractable equilibrium model that features all of these trade-offs. The analytical expressions we derive for social welfare deliver a transparent understanding of how preference, technology, and market structure parameters influence the optimal degree of progressivity. A calibration for the U.S. economy indicates that endogenous skill investment, flexible labor supply, and the desire to finance government purchases play quantitatively similar roles in limiting optimal progressivity. In a version of the model where poverty constrains skill investment, optimal progressivity is close to the U.S. value. An empirical analysis on cross-country data offers support to the theory.

We provide a macroeconomic theory where demand for goods has a productive role. A search friction prevents perfect matching between producers and potential customers. Larger demand induces more search, which, in turn, increases GDP and measured total factor productivity (TFP). We embed the product-market friction in a standard neoclassical model and estimate it using Bayesian techniques. Business cycles are driven by preference shocks, true technology shocks, and investment-specific shocks. Preference shocks have qualitatively similar effects as true productivity shocks. These shocks account for a large share of the fluctuations in consumption, GDP, and measured TFP and can be identified using shopping time data.

We develop a model with partial insurance against idiosyncratic wage shocks to quantify risk sharing. Closed-form solutions are obtained for equilibrium allocations and for moments of the joint distribution of consumption, hours, and wages. We prove identification and demonstrate how labor supply data are informative about risk sharing. The model, estimated with US data over the period 1967–2006, implies that (i) 39 percent of permanent wage shocks pass through to consumption; (ii ) the share of wage risk insured increased until the early 1980s; and (iii) preference heterogeneity is important in accounting for observed dispersion in consumption and hours.

How Important Are Idiosyncratic Shocks? Evidence from Labor Supply by Kjetil Storesletten, Chris I. Telmer and Amir Yaron. Published in volume 91, issue 2, pages 413-417 of American Economic Review, May 2001

In recent decades, American workers have faced a rising college premium, a narrowing gender gap, and increasing wage volatility. This paper explores the quantitative and welfare implications of these changes. The framework is an incomplete-markets life cycle model in which individuals choose education, intrafamily time allocation, and savings. Given the observed history of the U.S. wage structure, the model replicates key trends in cross-sectional inequality in hours worked, earnings, and consumption. Recent cohorts enjoy welfare gains, on average, as higher relative wages for college graduates and for women translate into higher educational attainment and a more even division of labor within the household.

Is individual labor income more risky in recessions? This is a difficult question to answer because existing panel data sets are so short. To address this problem, we develop a generalized method of moments estimator that conditions on the macroeconomic history that each member of the panel has experienced. Variation in the cross‐sectional variance between households with differing macroeconomic histories allows us to incorporate business cycle information dating back to 1930, even though our data do not begin until 1968. We implement this estimator using household‐level labor earnings data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We estimate that idiosyncratic risk is (i) highly persistent, with an annual autocorrelation coefficient of 0.95, and (ii) strongly countercyclical, with a conditional standard deviation that increases by 75 percent (from 0.12 to 0.21) as the macroeconomy moves from peak to trough.