A model of time-consistent procrastination is developed to assess the extent to which the observed behavior is compatible with rational behavior. When a finite work requirement must be completed by a deadline, the remaining time for leisure is an exhaustible resource. With a positive rate of time preference, the optimal allocation of this resource results in more hours spent working (and fewer ...

Introducing extrapolation bias into a standard one-sector production-based real business cycle model with recursive preferences reconciles salient stylized facts about business cycles (low consumption volatility and high investment volatility relative to output) and financial markets (high equity premium, volatile stock returns, and a low and smooth riskfree rate) with low relative risk aversio...

We analyze the forces that can generate retirement in different versions of standard life cycle models of labor supply. While nonconvexities in production can generate retirement, we show that the size of nonconvexities needed increases sharply as the intertemporal elasticity of substitution for labor decreases. ∗We thank Eric French, Steve Davis, Yongsung Chang plus seminar and conference part...

Using pseudo-panel data, we estimate the structural parameters of a life—cycle consumption model with discrete labor supply choice. A focus of our analysis is the abrupt drop in consumption upon retirement for a typical household. The literature sometimes refers to the drop, which in the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey we estimate to be approximately 14%, as the “retirement— consumption puzzle...

We derive the well-known continuity principle for adjoint variables for preannounced or anticipated changes in parameters for continuoustime, infinite-horizon, perfect foresight optimization models. For easy and intuitive numerical computation of the resulting multi point boundary value problem we suggested to simulate the resulting differential algebraic system representing the first order con...

The “neoclassical synthesis” sticky price model exhibits strange behavior when augmented with markets for durable goods with flexible prices. While in the data the output of durable goods responds strongly and positively to a loosening of monetary policy, in dynamic general equilibrium models a monetary expansion causes the output of flexibly priced durables to contract. In an instructive speci...

An axiomatic characterization of recursive utility with source-dependent constant relative risk aversion (CRRA), constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution, constant rate of impatience and subjective beliefs is established. The utility form is a minimal extension of Epstein-Zin-Weil utility that allows the CRRA to depend on the source of risk, a dependence that admits an ambiguity aversi...

Abstract Nowadays, fishery and aquaculture products form an important fraction of the protein requirement and food of many people on the earth. The hike in prices of these essential products seems necessary owing to the increase in demand and consumption of these products in the country. The price transmission from the international market to the domestic market of tunas was  investigated in t...

We characterize the optimal linear tax on capital in an Overlapping Generations model with two period lived households facing uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. The Ramsey government internalizes the general equilibrium feedback of private precautionary saving. For logarithmic utility our full analytical solution of the Ramsey problem shows that the optimal aggregate saving rate is in...

We explore the link between wealth inequality, preference heterogeneity and macroeconomic volatility in a two-sector neoclassical growth model. First we prove that, if agents have homogeneous preferences, when the absolute risk tolerance is a strictly convex (concave) function, sufficiently high (low) levels of wealth inequality may lead to endogenous fluctuations in the neighborhood of the ste...