Income inequality in a job-search model with heterogeneous discount factors: (revised version, forthcoming 2006, Revista Economia)

This paper investigates the income inequality generated by a jobsearch process when di§erent cohorts of homogeneous workers are allowed to have di§erent 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 coe¢ cient of income inequality can be easily derived in this case. An example with arbitrary measures regarding the wage o§ers 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 Önd a job o§er each period.

"We sold a million units": the role of advertising past-sales

In a market where past-sales embed information about consumers’ tastes (quality), we analyze the seller’s incentives to invest in a costly advertising campaign to report them under two informational assumptions. In the …rst scenario, a pooling equilibrium with past-sales advertising is derived. Information revelation only occurs when the seller bene…ciates from the herding behaviour that the advertising campaign induces on the part of consumers. In the second informational regime, a separating equilibrium with past-sales advertising is computed. Information revelation always happens, either through prices or through costly advertisements.

Um estudo sobre os ciclos de negócios brasileiro (1900-2012)

O presente artigo estuda os ciclos de negócios brasileiro no período dos anos 1900 até 2012. Como a série trimestral do PIB real só começa em 1980 é construida a série para o período de 1900 a 1979, utilizando um modelo estrutural de series de tempo com disagregação temporal para o primeiro período. A partir disso, um modelo com mudança Markoviana é proposto para que seja construída uma cronologia de ciclo de negócios. O modelo selecionado possui dois regimes distintos cenários de expansão e de recessão, a datação obtida é comparada com outros estudos sobre o tema e são propostas caracterizações das fases de crescimento que podem apoiar estudos sobre a história econômica do Brasil.