Bankruptcy and Transaction Costs in General Financial Models

General financial models have become workhorse models in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. These models have been developed and extensively studied by general equilibrium theorists. What makes them so applicable for macroeconomics and finance is the well accepted fact that models with a representative agent and without financial frictions yield equilibrium outcomes that are inconsistent with the empirical realities of financial markets. The general financial models are characterized by two main features: heterogeneous agents and financial frictions. The ability of these models to be applied in the fields of macroeconomics and finance in the future depends upon the frontier research in general equilibrium today. Over the past 20 years, research in general equilibrium has predominantly focused on a single friction: incomplete financial markets. The papers contained in this dissertation will analyze the equilibrium effects, both positive and normative, of two seldom researched frictions: bankruptcy and transaction costs. It is the hope that by studying financial frictions in isolation, we may learn which frictions have the greatest effect on welfare, which frictions are most able to be controlled by the government, and how to satisfactorily analyze the equilibrium of a process that is concurrently being restrained by several frictions

Frameworks for a General-Purpose Smart Home Operating System

Smart home technologies are rapidly growing in prevalence. For my senior project, I designed and implemented the beginnings of a general-purpose framework for a unified Smart Home Operating System, capable of controlling all of the diverse aspects of automated homes. This paper outlines the design challenges involved in building generic smart home systems, as well as the project architecture I designed and implemented to attempt to solve this problem

Climbing Down the Ladder: Inwardness and Abstraction in Wittgenstein\u27s Philosophy with Reference to Kierkegaard

Both Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that there are some truths, located beyond the boundaries of rational understanding, which cannot be communicated directly to others. Wittgenstein was influenced by his reading of Kierkegaard\u27s texts on these matters, and accordingly he, like Kierkegaard, has a place in his philosophy for the importance of inwardness in knowing paradoxical truths. A move of \u27inwardness,\u27 for Kierkegaard, is an action that requires a personal and absolute belief that can\u27t be explained directly to others, while \u27paradoxical truths\u27, as Kierkegaard uses the phrase, refers to propositions that we regard as incomprehensible but true (one of his examples is the claim that Christ is both fully God and fully human). For Kierkegaard, we express inwardness when we actively and fully invest ourselves in believing a paradox. It is clear that Wittgenstein also believed that we can understand some things in a non-standard, non-objective way. The passages in which he discusses this kind of nonobjective understanding, however, are notoriously obscure

Indeterminacy in Stochastic Overlapping Generations Models: Real Effects in the Long Run

Indeterminate equilibria are known to exist for overlapping generations models, though recent research has been limited to deterministic settings in which all equilibria converge to a steady state in the long run. This paper analyzes stochastic overlapping generations models with 3-period lived representative consumers and adopts a novel computational algorithm to numerically approximate the entire set of competitive equilibria. In a stochastic setting with incomplete markets, indeterminacy has real effects in the long run. Our numerical simulations reveal that indeterminacy is an order of magnitude more important than endowment shocks in explaining long-run consumption and asset price volatility

Jungle beef: consumption, production and destruction, and the development process in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract The environmental impacts of the global livestock industry are expected to continue increasing due to high meat consumption among affluent consumers in developed nations, and "new" consumers in emerging countries, such as Brazil. There is substantial research on the connections between international meat consumption and the destruction of Latin American environments, but less is known about the links between production/destruction and consumption in developing settings. In the western Amazon state of Acre, Brazil, increasing beef consumption is directly linked with local cattle production and environmental destruction, providing an opportunity to examine the relationships between these processes in a developing context. Interviews, participant-observation, and a standardized survey provide data on perceptions of beef and meat preferences, and how these relate to practices and patterns of consumption among a range of groups, from urban environmentalists to beef-loving cowboys. The results reveal how the hierarchical ordering of foods, with beef at the top, maps onto similar hierarchies of status and class, as well as notions of strength and nutrition. The analysis of beef consumption in a developing setting illustrates how beef is both a signifier of development and the symbolic and material fuel for a development process in which individuals, society, and the environment are transformed and improved. This study of local connections complements macro- and regional-level research on destruction and consumption linkages by offering insights on why consumers in a developing setting choose beef, and how the rubble and destruction of expanding Latin American agricultural frontiers is hidden, ignored, or written off in a discourse emphasizing the social and economic benefits of development. Keywords: Amazonia, beef, Brazil, cattle ranching, consumption, deforestation, development, food, mea