Behavioral Biases in General Equilibrium: Implications for Wealth Inequality and Human Capital Formation

My research focuses on the integration of behavioral economics into well understood general equilibrium macroeconomic models populated by overlapping generations of heterogeneous agents. Specifically, I analyze the implications of populating model economies with present-biased agents who are finitely lived, subject to idiosyncratic labor income shocks, and heterogeneous in both exponential and present-biased discount factors. My primary goal is characterizing the contribution of behavioral biases towards resolving several issues in the literature pertaining to human capital investment and aggregate wealth inequality. Further, the inclusion of present bias in carefully calibrated model economies allows me to rationalize empirical differences in consumption, wealth, and education that arise between observationally similar households that models of homogeneous, exponential discounters are unable to match.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Oregon

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Nighswander, Tristan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chakraborty, Shankha

• Behavioral economics
• Human capital
• Inequality
• Macroeconomics

Statement dc:rights

• All Rights Reserved.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/23811

OAI record oai:identifier

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Ascholarsbank.uoregon.edu%3A1794%2F23811