Income Inequality in a Job-Search Model With Heterogeneous Discount Factors

This paper investigates the income inequality generated by a job-search process when different cohorts of homogeneous workers are allowed to have different degrees of impatience. Using the fact the average wage under the invariant Markovian distribution is a decreasing function of the discount factor (Cysne 2004, 2006), I show that the Lorenz curve and the between-cohort Gini coefficient of income inequality can be easily derived in this case. An example with arbitrary measures regarding the wage offers and the distribution of time preferences among cohorts provides some insights into how much income inequality can be generated, and into how it varies as a function of the probability of unemployment and of the probability that the worker does not find a job offer each period.Income Inequality, Job Search, Impatience, Time Preference

The n-Dimensional Bailey-Divisia Measure as a General-Equilibrium Measure of the Welfare Costs of Inflation

This paper shows that in economies with several monies the Bailey-Divisia multidimensional consumers surplus formula may emerge as an exact general-equilibrium measure of the welfare costs of in ation, provided that preferences are quasilinear.

EQUITY-PREMIUM PUZZLE: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZILIAN DATA

This paper uses 1992:1-2004:2 quarterly data and two diferent methods (approximation under lognormality and calibration) to evaluate the existence of an equity- premium puzzle in Brazil. In contrast with some previous works in the Brazilian literature, I conclude that the model used by Mehra and Prescott (1985), either with additive or recursive preferences, is not able to satisfactorily rationalize the equity premium observed in the Brazilian data. The second contribution of the paper is calling the attention to the fact that the utility function calculated under the discrete-state approximation may not exist if the data (as it is the case with Brazilian time series) implies the existence of states in which high negative rates of consumption growth are attained with relatively high probability.