Saliency is the ability of an image location to attract attention or detailed processing. A unique vertical bar among horizontal bars is said to be salient and pops out perceptually. Physiological data have suggested that mechanisms in the primary visual cortex (V1) contribute to the high saliency of such a unique basic feature, but indicated little regarding 1This chapter is adapted from Zhaop...

Exploiting three Italian earthquakes as quasi-experiments, we analyze the response of homeowners’ consumption to transfers targeted to finance housing reconstruction over time—which, like loans, mainly affect the liquidity of households’ wealth in the short run. We show that transfers that have no effect on consumption over a multi-year horizon, can have significant heterogeneous effects on imp...

The equity premium puzzle shows that using standard parameters and setup, the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model’s (CCAPM’s) prediction of the premium associated with systematic risk is out by an order of magnitude. The object of this paper is to consider the implications of each of the broad classes of explanations of the equity premium puzzle for resource allocation, welfare and po...

What is the impact of surprise and anticipated policy changes when agents form expectations using adaptive learning rather than rational expectations? We examine this issue using the standard stochastic real business cycle model with lump-sum taxes. Agents combine knowledge about future policy with econometric forecasts of future wages and interest rates. Dynamics under learning can have large ...

To what extent do bond market reactions to an unexpected deficit shock depend on state-specific politics? To answer this question, we calculate German state bond spreads over government benchmark paper using information from Datastream for the period 2006-2010. We test for a variety of institutional and political factors. We find evidence that investors base risk perceptions on state specific e...

We analyze how public debt evolves when successive policymakers have different policy goals and cannot make credible commitments about their future policies. We consider several cases to be able to quantify the effects of imperfect commitment, political disagreement and political turnover. Imperfect commitment drives the long-run level of debt to zero. With political disagreement debt is a size...

We analyze positive theories of redistribution, social insurance and public good provision in a dynamic macroeconomic framework. Political outcomes are determined via repeated voting and driven by a conflict of interests between agents. Voters and politicians rationally forecast the impact of current political choices on future political and economic outcomes. The theory is consistent with larg...

This paper uses a two-region, two-period overlapping generations model with international labor mobility to examine the efficacy of using tax policy to internalize the externalities created by international labor migration. While a brain drain tax has a substantial limiting effect on labor migration and a small negative effect on per worker growth, it is found to be a viable solution to the neg...

The role of government expenditure is analyzed in the context of growing economy with endogenous labor supply and with investment adjustment costs. Assuming the dynasty model of representative consumer’s utility maximization i.e., the present value of over time felicity function maximization under the law of motion capital where felicity function depends consumption, leisure and government expe...

This paper evaluates the effects of a fall in payroll taxes on employment and wages in the presence of high labor informality. For that purpose, the paper examines a recently approved tax reform in Colombia especially targeted to promote labor formality. The model suggests that the reform would increase total employment by between 0.3 to 0.5 percent and formal employment by between 3.4 to 3.7 p...