The joint assumptions of quasi-hyperbolic discounting and imperfect capital market lead to non-convexities in selves’ objective functions that may imply discontinuous equilibrium strategies. If this property was early recognized, authors generally take assumptions on parameters that allow to avoid the problem. In contrast to the literature, I choose to give a full characterization of these stra...

7 We present a model of structural change due to non-linear Engel-curves for consumer 8 goods. Goods are sequentially introduced starting out as a luxury with high income 9 elasticity and ending up as a necessity with low income elasticity. Although this leads to 10 rising and falling sectoral employment shares, the model exhibits a steady growth path 11 along which the Kaldor facts are satisfi...

Can the well-known experimental phenomenon of present-bias in intertemporal choice be confounded with the risks associated with receiving payment? Can measurements of risk preferences be used to represent desires for smoothness in intertemporal payments? In our two 2012 papers in this journal we explored these two questions and found the answer to the first to be yes and the second to be no. We...

Credit card default losses increased dramatically in the 80s and 90s, from 3% to over 5% of outstanding debt. We explore whether technological progress in debt collection is behind this change by developing a new theory featuring costly state verification with signals. We motivate our approach by the predominance of informal bankruptcy in the credit card market, which necessitates the costly in...

This paper incorporates egocentric comparisons into a human capital accumulation model and studies the evolution of positive self image over time. The paper shows that the process of human capital accumulation together with egocentric comparisons imply that positive self image of a cohort is first increasing and then decreasing over time. Additionally, the paper finds that positive self image: ...

Extending Barro (1999) and Luttmer & Mariotti (2003), we introduce a new model of time preferences: the instantaneous-gratification model. This model applies tractably to a much wider range of settings than existing models. It applies to complete and incomplete-market settings and it works with generic utility functions. It works in settings with linear policy rules and in settings in which equ...

This article surveyed recipients of one-off government transfers in Singapore to investigate to what extent different behavioral motives might have affected their consumption response. It also investigates how the recipients’ personal characteristics might have affected their consumption response and the appeal of different motives. In the sample surveyed, savers were mostly motivated by precau...

This paper studies the optimal choice of home equity release products. The decision problem of a retiring couple is modeled that holds the major fraction of their wealth as home equity and faces longevity, long-term care, house price, and interest rate risk. The couple can choose to buy annuities, long-term care insurance, and to borrow against the home using different equity release products. ...

We consider a stochastic overlapping generations model for a continuum of individuals with finite lives in presence of a financial market. In this paper, agent’s heterogeneity is given by the dates of birth of the households, on the contrary to standard models, in which each agent has his own aversion coefficient on his utility function. By means of the martingale arguments, we compute the agen...

This paper analyzes the impact of (quasi-) hyperbolic discounting on timing and numbers of births. Using a simple three period model it shows that without the ability to save and borrow hyperbolic discounters postpone births and give birth to less children than previously intended. In the presence of a (perfect) capital market additional qualifications are required to obtain similar results. In...