A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of...

In economic approaches it is often argued that reputation considerations influence the behavior of individuals or firms and that reputation influences the outcome of markets. Empirical evidence is rare though. In this contribution we argue that a positive reputation of sellers should have an...

pagehe problem of term structure of interest rates modelling is considered in a continuous-time framework. The emphasis is on the bond prices, forward bond prices or LIBOR rates, rather than on the instantaneous rates as in the traditional models. Forward and spot probability measures are...

In standard economic theory, mechanisms like Adam Smith's "invisible hand" or the Walrasian auctioneer balance aggregate demand and supply and match individuals such that the market clears. Usually, some kind of price adjustment process is assumed without specifying how the implied transactions...

The effect of model and parameter misspecification on the effectiveness of Gaussian hedging strategies for derivative financial instruments is analyzed, showing that Gaussian hedges in the `natural'' hedging instruments are particularly robust. This is true for all models that imply...

A term structure model with lognormal type volatility structure is proposed. The Heath, Jarrow and Morton (HJM) framework, coupled with the theory of stochastic evolution equations in infinite dimensions, is used to show that the resulting rates are well defined (they do not explode) and remain...

We develop a new approach to pricing and hedging contingent claims in incomplete markets. Mimicking as closely as possible in an incomplete markets framework the no--arbitrage arguments that have been developed in complete markets leads us to defining the concept of pseudo--arbitrage. Building...

Assuming constant interest rates Brennan and Schwartz (1976, 1979) obtained the rational insurance premium on an equity-linked insurance contract through the application of the theory of contingent claims pricing. Further considerations with deterministic interest rates have been discussed in...

We study a model of local evolution. Players are located on a network and play games agains their neighbors. Players are characterized by three properties: (1) The stage game strategies they use agains their neighbors. (2) The repeated game strategy that determines the former. (3) A learning...

In this note we consider the {\it general} linear regression model