Precautionary Demand for Education, Inequality, and Technological Progress

This paper offers an explanation for the evolution of wage inequality within and between industries and education groups over the past several decades. The model is based on the disproportionate depreciation of technology-specific skills versus general skills due to technological progress, which occurs randomly across sectors. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that increasing randomness is the primary source of inequality growth within uneducated workers, whereas inequality growth within educated workers is determined more by changes in the composition and return to ability. Increasing randomness generates a precautionary demand for education, which we show empirically to be significant.     

From Physical to Human Capital Accumulation: Inequality and the Process of Development

This paper develops a growth theory that captures the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of growth along the process of development. It argues that the positive impact of inequality on the growth process was reversed in this process. In early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when physical capital accumulation was the prime source of growth, inequality stimulated development by channelling resources towards individuals with a higher propensity to save. As human capital emerged as a growth engine, equality alleviated adverse effects of credit constraints on human capital accumulation, stimulating the growth process.     

Lifestyles of the rich and polygynous in Cote d’Ivoire

This paper investigates whether the sources of income, not just the levels, determine whether an individual is monogamous. Our results support the idea that polygyny stunts development by allowing wealthy men to acquire wives rather than investing in child quality.     

Inventory management effects,isolated: Evidence from the federal funds market

The federal funds market is highly competitive, has uniform information, and does not have most order-processing cost components of equity markets. Hence, it provides an opportunity to study the effect of inventory management on the bid-ask spread in an isolated fashion. Using a unique data set of daily borrowing and lending federal funds quotes posted by a large commercial bank, we find that the bank maintains a fairly constant bid-ask spread throughout a two-week reserve maintenance period. It acts similarly to a market maker facilitating flow of funds between depository institutions throughout the reserve maintenance period. The bank becomes more active toward the end of the period. In particular, on settlement Wednesday it increases the bid and ask quotes relative to the effective federal funds rate in an apparent attempt to manage its reserve inventory and satisfy its own reserve requirements.     

A two-dimensional problem of revenue maximization

We consider the problem of finding the mechanism that maximizes the revenue of a seller of multiple objects. This problem turns out to be significantly more complex than the case where there is only a single object (which was solved by Myerson, 1981). The analysis is difficult even in the simplest case studied here, where there are two exclusive objects and a single buyer, with valuations uniformly distributed on triangular domains. We show that the optimal mechanisms are piecewise linear with either 2 or 3 pieces, and obtain explicit formulas for most cases of interest.     

The Impact of Religion on the Going Concern Reporting Decisions of Local Audit Offices

We extend research on the effects of local audit office characteristics on audit quality by investigating whether audit offices in highly religious U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) exhibit going concern decisions that reflect heightened professional skepticism relative to audit offices in less religious MSAs. Prior research links religiosity to risk aversion and ethical development and suggests audit practice offices in more religious MSAs are more likely to issue going concern opinions because they will assess the effects of mitigating factors in a more skeptical manner. Our results indicate that audit practice offices located in highly religious MSAs are more likely to issue going concern audit opinions, consistent with a more skeptical assessment of mitigating factors. Additional tests provide direct evidence consistent with the argument that these audit offices are more risk averse in issuing going concern opinions. Our findings are relevant to auditors, audit clients, researchers, and regulators.