prof.: Sekyu Choi (sekyu.choi@uab.cat)

we meet: Mon-Wed at 9:30am
office hours: Monday, 5 to 7pm or by appointment

Syllabus
here

I will use this webpage to keep track of class discussion, give announcements and post the problem sets. Also, ocassional 'extra' readings will be posted here.

Problem Sets
first problem set: due Wednesday, Jan 18th. Here is a sample code. Aruoba, Fernández-Villaverde and Rubio-Ramirez have a very nice paper discussing different methods to solve the same problem.

second problem set: due Monday, Jan 30th.

third problem set: due Wednesday, Feb. 8th.

Class Log

Mon., Jan 9th.: We discussed the syllabus and logistics for this course. I put emphasis on the fact that most of the learning will be done by doing/replicating papers. We then briefly discussed the simplest labor supply model (based partially on Keane's 2010 survey), labor supply elasticities and how to estimate preference parameters with this setup.

Wed, Jan 11th.: We did a brief review of the standard growth model and its recursive representation, as well as the definition of recursive competitive equilibria. We then discussed how to apply this model to the question of why individuals in the U.S. seem to work more than people in other OECD countries (Prescott 2004). 

Mon., Jan 16th.: We talked about two extensions to the simple labor supply model: discrete labor choice and dynamic labor choice, through the effect of current hours of work on the accumulation of labor market experience.

Wed., Jan 18th.: Rita discussed part 1 of problem set 1 and Alberto did part 2. We then talked about heterogeneity and inequality in wages and how can we think about that in terms of the models we've seen in class. We discussed heterogeneous agents models and the standard incomplete market economy where agents cannot insure against idiosyncratic risk. Here is a very good description of some computational issues arising when trying to solve this type of economies.

Mon. Jan 23th.: We discussed the standard incomplete markets model in some more detail: the problem of the household, borrowing limits and the need for some additional restrictions for the problem to have a finite level of capital. Then, we discussed life-cycle/OLG economies where the finitie lives of agents prevent them from over accumulating assets (thus, no need for restrictions on beta(1+r)).

Wed. Jan 25th.: Today we talked a little bit about modeling households instead of individuals: we introduced the unitary model and the basic collective model in a static framework.

Mon. Jan 30th.: Na and Ying talked about the data part of problem set 2 (computing life-cycle profiles of hours/wages), while Francesco and Elena talked about value function iteration for a stochastic growth model. We then finished talking about the collective model of household decisions and how you can apply these models to issues of marriage/divorce and female labor force participation.

Wed. Feb. 1st.: We discussed some additional issues of models with families. We then started the discussion of models with search and matching in the labor market.

Mon. Feb 6th: We introduced the Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model of labor markets.

Wed. Feb. 8th: Further discussion of the MP model: soultion method, calibration and its inability to reproduce labor market volatility as seen in the data.