I introduce a conditional measure of skill, the correlation between fund's trades and future news of the stocks traded. Using this measure, I show that the average fund manager in the cross-section of U.S. equity mutual funds has stock picking skill. This skill is mainly driven by manager's ability to predict rm's cashow news. Importantly, this skill has short term persistence, which is not exp...

Wages or Fringes? Some Evidence on Trade-offs and Sorting The two key predictions of hedonic wage theory are that there is a trade-off between wages and nonmonetary rewards and that the latter can be used as a sorting device by firms to attract and retain the kind of employees they desire. Empirical analysis of these topics are scarce as they require detailed data on all monetary as well as non...

We develop a model to analyze the implications of "ring costs on incentives for R&D and international specialization. The key idea is that countries with a rigid labor market will tend to produce relatively secure goods, at a late stage of their product life cycle. Consequently, their researchers tend to specialize in &secondary innovation' which improves existing products, rather than &primary...

Despite a strong interest in entrepreneurship, economists have devoted little attention to the role of health insurance availability. I investigate the impact of a unique policy experiment—New Jersey’s Individual Health Coverage Plan—on self-employment. Implemented in August 1993, the IHCP included an extensive set of reforms that loosened the historical connection between traditional employmen...

Abstract This study compares the protective effectiveness of Social Safety Nets (SSNs) provided by government and NGOs in rural Pakistan, using quasi-experimental methodology on PRPHS (2011–12) data. The treatment group was households receiving SSNs assistance. counterfactual (control group) determined propensity score matching. Outcome indicators were shock-coping strategies from which are the...

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In such a setting, a (redistributive) Pay-As-You-Go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is larger than the rate of population growth. The medium wages workers (not the lowest) join the retirees to form a majority and vote for a posi...

Retirement and Consumption in a Life Cycle Model Consumption expenditure declines sharply at the time of retirement for many households, but the majority maintain a smooth consumption path. A simple life cycle model with uncertainty about the time of retirement can account for this pattern. A richer version of the model is calibrated to data from the Health and Retirement Study. The median chan...

We develop and estimate an econometric model of limit-order execution times using survival analysis and actual limit-order data. We estimate versions for time-to-first-fill and time-to-completion for both buy and sell limit orders, and incorporate the effects of explanatory variables such as the limit price, limit size, bid/offer spread, and market volatility. Execution times are very sensitive...

This paper looks at standard retirement targets such as “70@65,” meaning 70% income replacement at age 65, and reconsiders them in a probabilistic setting. The paper uses a chance constrained programming model, supplemented with Monte Carlo simulation, to extend the target to “70% of 70@65” meaning a 70% chance of meeting the target. One implication of the paper is that asset mix is a function ...