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An implicit assumption underpins basic models of the evolution of cooperation, mutualism and altruism: The benefits (or pay-offs) of cooperation and defection are defined by the current frequency or distribution of cooperators. In social dilemmas involving durable public goods (group resources that can persist in the environment-ubiquitous from microbes to humans) this assumption is violated. H...

In this paper three hypotheses concerning the cyclicality of U.S. consumers’ expenditure are proposed. These hypotheses are based upon the distinction between expenditure on durable and non-durable goods. It is argued that durability will lead to increased cyclical sensitivity and that this increased cyclicality will be of an asymmetric nature. The asymmetric adjustment will be of the form of d...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovem...

F often have to make their production decisions under conditions of demand uncertainty. This is especially true for product categories such as automobiles and technology goods where the lead time needed for manufacturing forces firms to make production decisions well in advance of the selling season. Once the firm has produced the goods, the available production volume affects the firm’s subseq...

This is an interesting paper on a timely topic. As the authors argue, the recent global financial crisis has its roots in increased mortgage delinquencies caused by the bursting of the housing bubble in the United States. By what mechanism does such an increase in mortgage delinquencies affect the rest of the economy? And how should policy react to it? To address these issues, the authors devel...

I confess that I did not intend to take an inventory of the modest wealth my wife and I had accumulated in nine years of married life. But a pair of birds got stuck in the attic, tried to find their way out the rear window, and made a mess of things. It was not as psycho as a Hitch-cock movie, but it forced my wife and me to look hard at our belongings. We found our daughter Rebecca's baby clot...

The GEM-E3 model starts from the same basic structure as the standard World Bank models2. Following the tradition of these models, GEM-E3 is built on the basis of a Social Accounting Matrix (Decaluwe, Martens and Monette 1987; Decaluwe and Martens 1988) and explicitly formulates demand and supply equilibrium. Technical coefficients in production and demand are flexible in the sense that produce...

Many central banks conduct monetary policy according to an inflation targeting framework, which requires that some measure of inflation be chosen as the target. One approach would be to use an index of goods and services whose prices are market determined and not subject to frequent, idiosyncratic, and transitory changes. That could be an index based on the personal consumption expenditures pri...

The existing literature on channel coordination typically models markets where used goods are not sold, or are sold outside the standard channel. However, retailers routinely sell used goods for a profit in markets like textbooks. Further, such markets are characterized by a renewable consumer population over time, rather than the static consumer population often assumed in prior literature. We...